tagged w/ occupy everything
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After a modified, anti-fracking Smokey the Bear went viral, the U.S. Forest Service threatened legal action against the activist who created it. The case now revolves around fair use, culture jamming, and just whose side the Forest Service is really on.
By Peter Rugh | May 7, 2013
Smokey the Bear thought he smelled a fire in the woods. But as he approached the clearing and saw a giant derrick jutting out into the sky, he realized that what his nose had picked up was the scent of hydrocarbons. It was another piece of evidence that the increasingly widespread method of oil and gas extraction known as fracking was poisoning the environment that he and his human friends depend on. He decided something must be done.
At least that’s the way that artist, Occupy Wall Street veteran and environmental activist Lopi LaRoe sees it. But last week she received a letter threatening her with jail time and thousands of dollars in fines for enlisting Smokey to the anti-fracking cause.
In the fall, LaRoe created an image of Smokey that altered his famous invective “Only you can prevent forest fires” to “Only you can prevent faucet fires” — a reference to the phenomenon of flaming tapsthat occasionally occur near where fracking takes place. The adjustment seemed to her in line with the message of conservation Smokey has come to embody.
“This is the radicalization of Smokey the Bear,” said LaRoe. “This is Smokey waking up and saying, ‘Oh you didn’t do that to my environment.’ Smokey wants to fight the corporations and protect the air and the water and the plants and the animals and the people.”
Her parody went viral. She began printing T-shirts at the insistence of friends on Facebook, but demand quickly surpassed those in her immediate circle of contacts. Soon she was packing Smokey in FedEx envelopes and sending him off to Australia and other far-flung terrains. There are also tote bags and patches with the Smokey meme available at LaRoe’s website. (The tote bags, she advertises, are “great for dumpster diving.”) LaRoe says she’s not out to become rich and the money she charges customers goes toward covering her costs so that she can keep spreading the message of faucet-fire prevention far and wide.
“It spread like wildfire,” she said, grinning ear to ear.
Not everyone is amused. LaRoe received a cease-and-desist letter from the Metis Group, which serves as legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service division. The letter informs LaRoe that Smokey, his character and his slogan are property of the U.S. government and warns that she has until May 2 to halt the use of Smokey on her “products” and to stop distributing electronic copies of the meme. Otherwise, she faces up to six months in prison and a penalty as high as $150,000.
“Any time anybody uses Smokey’s image for anything other than wildfire prevention,” said Helene Cleveland, fire prevention program manager for the Forest Service, “it confuses the public. What we’re trying to do is keep Smokey on message.” Cleveland added that the 1952 Smokey the Bear Act takes the character out of the public domain and “any change in that would have to go through Congress.”
Two other entities besides the Forest Service claim joint rights to Smokey. The National Association of State Foresters — a non-profit organization consisting of directors of U.S. forestry agencies — and the Ad Council.
Remember “This is your brain on drugs”? Or the Indian weeping over pollution? They were the Ad Council’s handiwork. A non-profit, it describes itself as a promoter of “public service campaigns on behalf of non-profit organizations and government agencies” with a focus on “improving the quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community well being and strengthening families.” Smokey the Bear was born at the Ad Council, on the desk of abstract expressionist and Marx-influenced art critic Harold Rosenberg, who had a part time job there in the mid-1940s.
The Ad Council’s board of directors is a conflagration of representatives of the world’s wealthiest corporations, including representatives of such companies as General Electric, which announced plans last month to spend $110 million on a research lab devoted to the study of fracking, and finance giants such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. On its website, Citibank advertises an “extensive array of deposit, cash management and credit products” for oil and gas drillers, while a JPMorgan Chase subsidiary boasts its “Oil & Gas Investment Banking group covers the complete oil and gas value chain, which includes exploration and production, natural gas processing and transmission, refining and marketing, and oilfield services.”
LaRoe believes that those who claim to own Smokey “don’t care that I’m selling a few T-shirts. They’re out to crush the meme.”
Both the Ad Council and the Metis Group declined to comment for this story.
Despite the warnings in the cease-and-desist letter she received, the May 2 deadline to shut down her site and retire her anti-fracking Smokey came and went; LaRoe has not ceased or desisted. Instead, she enlisted the help of her own legal counsel, who fired back with a letter to the Metis Group on Friday. In it, attorney Evan Sarzin argues that LaRoe ‘s culture-jam appropriation of Smokey is permissible under the fair-use exemption to exclusive copyright ownership and chides the the Forest Service for attempting to infringe on LaRoe’s First Amendment rights.
Sarzin also points out that this is not the first time the Forest Service has sought to silence environmentalists for appropriating Smokey’s image. In the early 1990s, the Forest Service demanded reparations from the Sante Fe-based conservation group LightHawk after it used Smokey’s likeness in ads critical of the agency’s practice of auctioning off land to timber companies. (The Forest Service, as part of the Department of Agriculture, makes its land available for commercial use.) Unlike LaRoe’s Smokey, LightHawk’s black bear appeared angry and wielded a chainsaw. “Say it ain’t so, Smokey,” read the ads.
With legal funds provided by the Sierra Club, LightHawk sued the Forest Service in 1992 for infringing on its freedom of speech. The court eventually sided with the plaintiffs, noting that “the satirical use of Smokey the Bear to criticize Forest Service management techniques is unlikely to cause confusion or to dilute the value of Smokey the Bear to help prevent forest fires. Thus the Forest Service cannot have a compelling interest in prohibiting such use.”
Continued at link: http://www.utne.com/environment/only-you-can-prevent-faucet-fires.aspxAfter a modified, anti-fracking Smokey the Bear went viral, the U.S. Forest Service... more
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This morning Earth First and Occupy in DC organized a tar sands solidarity action that is currently occupying TransCanada’s lobby firm. They occupied and blockaded the building. Four arrested at last count.
You can watch the live stream here – http://www.ustream.tv/occupyeyeThis morning Earth First and Occupy in DC organized a tar sands solidarity action that... more
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Who are we Boomers going to emulate this political season — Gandhi, Jane Fonda, Cheech, Chong or Billy Jack? I’m thinking Billy Jackism is appropriate considering who the opponents are. I’m certainly not advocating real righteous violence, — just a whole lot of metaphorical ass-kicking.Who are we Boomers going to emulate this political season — Gandhi, Jane Fonda,... more
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About 125 demonstrators gathered downtown Monday evening to commemorate the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement and underscore that the Chicago chapter would continue pressing ahead.About 125 demonstrators gathered downtown Monday evening to commemorate the first... more
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Creative, Decentralized Actions for First Anniversary
By Sarah Jaffe | AlterNet
What started as a couple hundred people in a park with no plan has turned into a decentralized, distributed network of activists.
There is no longer an Occupy Wall Street.
That's what all the mainstream outlets are saying this week, and they're right in one way. What started as a couple hundred people in a park with no plan has turned into a decentralized, distributed network of activists, affinity groups, organizations and organizers, working on everything from free education to fracking. And so as New York's financial district was choked with glitter, balloons, dance parties and a whole lot of police, Occupy's anniversary feels less like a celebration of what was and more a demonstration of what's becoming.
The plan on paper sounded much like November 17th: Shut down the NYSE bell. But it quickly became very different. Maps handed out over the weekend (along with pre-coordinated text message lists) separated the Financial District into quadrants, each with its own theme: the Eco Zone, the Debt Zone, the Education Zone, and the 99% Zone (which includes the original occupation site at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza). At 7am, groups assembled in each zone to spread throughout the financial district, staging creative actions as well as old-fashioned sit-down protests, designed to confuse, distract, and infiltrate the heart of Wall Street.
From the red cube across from Zuccotti Park, one march headed out and down Broadway, to run straight into the police barricades at Wall Street. But unlike last fall, when the confrontations wound up as heated stare-downs between occupiers and police, this time groups of people splintered off and set off to do their own thing. The maps had marked strategically important locations--bank and corporate headquarters, the US Bankruptcy Court, Emblem Health, TD Ameritrade, and many more.
The NYPD, meanwhile, had set up its own occupation, more thoroughly shutting down and annoying the residents of the financial district than Occupy ever did. Barricades closed off all access to Wall Street and many other locations as well as encircling Zuccotti and lining both sides of Broadway. We spoke to one woman who was headed to her first day of work on Wall Street and was not allowed through the barricades because she did not yet have an ID--she struggled with tears as she told her story.
The police moved away from kettling and mass arrests a while ago and have settled on a much more terrifying tactic--seemingly random snatch and grabs, yanking people off the sidewalk out of a crowd. Artist Molly Crabapple was one such arrest, seized at around 8:00 AM from a march on a sidewalk near her Financial District apartment. So too was student organizer Isham Christie, grabbed off the sidewalk in front of me, seemingly for crossing the street at Broadway and Wall Street around 9:30 AM. While Christie is a longtime Occupy organizer, Crabapple is an internationally-known illustrator and artist (and, full disclosure, a sometime collaborator with this author) whose Occupy-related posters and prints have been wheat-pasted around the globe. According to National Lawyers Guild New York president Gideon Oliver, the 100-odd arrests by 11:00 AM also included a working legal observer, Damen Morgan, arrested while taking down names of arrestees. The arrests have tended to be quick, sometimes brutal, designed to intimidate and unnerve.
Some occupiers, meanwhile, managed to get away with much more than even they seemed to expect. After we followed directions from the debt bloc text message feed to regroup at 55 Water Street, we found a quick direct action spokescouncil happening, as affinity groups rested around the small park and a double line of riot cops stared impassively. After the council finished, groups departed one by one, leaving a few minutes between exits and each heading to a location known only to the members of that group. The affinity group model is an old one for the left, but in a movement like Occupy, suffering from a lack of a central location and trust problems from months of infiltration and debate, it makes a lot of sense. Friends look out for friends; information is shared on a need-to-know basis. Overarching plans are so public that the movement held its last pre-S17 spokescouncil at One Police Plaza Sunday, as if daring NYPD to shut them down, but individual plans are kept secret.
We watched the "balloon bloc," "writer's bloc," and free university blocs head out, and then an organizer I've known for over a year grabbed my arm and told me "You don't want to miss this."
I fell in with her and a small group that wouldn't tell me the plan but warned me that arrests were possible, and we moved down Water Street to the Chase building around the corner, where I fell back and watched the crew stroll unhindered through the revolving doors--and pull out bouncing balls, confetti, and a letter to Jamie Dimon, which they read out loud--until the cops finally came in. Most of them, including longtime members of Occupy's Direct Action Working Group, made it out again just fine, though a few arrests were reported, among them possibly NYU professor Andrew Ross of Occupy Student Debt.
Reports reached us that a group of clerics and other Occupy Faith members were planning a symbolic sit-in in front of the Wall Street Bull, so we headed that way next but found ourselves instead in a scrum on the sidewalk on Broadway where more seemingly random arrests happened.
Other reporters scattered throughout the Financial District caught other actions; Nick Pinto of the Village Voice tweeted that the education and debt blocs were joining up briefly to "symbolically enact their interrelation" by shutting down an intersection and stopping a police truck. Molly Knefel of Radio Dispatch reported "Just saw a cop walking w a giant pink cross, I assume confiscated from Occupy Faith". Citizen Radio's Allison Kilkenny saw "Two men in suits standing on corner quietly talking. Assumed they're wall street until I heard them discussing #ows tactics."
Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin magazine commented "When #OWS succeeds (tactically) make no mistake, it's a product of a creative well-spring w/ distinctly anarchist roots." He's right; it's been the strength and the weakness of the movement for a while. Today showed it, for a little while, at its best--joyous, thematic protests with (multiple) specific goals, coming together and breaking apart spontaneously, thinking on its feet and rolling with the punches, unable to be broken up by arrests, even targeted arrests. The protests were cheerful and celebratory; party hats and glitter abounded. It's been said by many, including Naomi Klein, that building a mass movement requires for the left to demonstrate not that it's right, but that it's having more fun, and today it's clear who's having fun: the activists, not the cops. It's also clear who's causing the traffic jams and roadblocks in the financial district: NYPD.
Today isn't about mass movement-building, though. That's the work these groups are doing day in and day out, off the streets, in their communities, with friends they met in and out of the park. Instead, these days now serve as a moment for the diverse parts of left movements to come together, to remind the enemy--financial firms and other big corporations--that they haven't forgotten.Creative, Decentralized Actions for First Anniversary
By Sarah Jaffe | AlterNet... more
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Perfect!!!!
Tampa city council members have agreed to abandon their efforts to evict a protesters' camp dubbed "Romneyville," after the Depression-era Hoovervilles, in a restricted area near the GOP convention site. The demands of the encampment, organized by The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and Occupy the RNC and featuring pink tents salvaged cheap from the Girl Scouts, include housing, food, healthcare, a living wage job for all, and an end to foreclosures and homelessness. When Mitt Romney goes there later this month, his habitual flip-flopping may make it difficult for some to understand just what he stands for. The folks from Bad Lip Reading help, unforgettably, to translate.Perfect!!!!
Tampa city council members have agreed to abandon their efforts to... more
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Recai Iskender interviews co-counsel after todays NDAA injunction hearing in NYC
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Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party's 2012 Candidate for President, was arrested for holding a sit-in at the local Fannie Mae office located in Philadelphia, protesting the housing foreclosures occurring throughout our country. She was formally charged with "defiant trespassing". So do we now have tyranny in our country when individuals peacefully exercise free speech?
In explaining why she protested, Stein said that almost half of Americans now live in poverty or near poverty, while eight million families face eviction from their homes due to foreclosures, and over a third of mortgage holders are "underwater" - meaning that they owe more to the lenders than their properties are worth on the market.
Said Stein, "The developers and financiers made trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts. Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators. It's time for a new deal for America, and a Green New Deal is what we will deliver on taking office. "
I applaud Jill Stein for her courage in standing up to tyranny for all Americans. This is the civil disobedience that worked so effectively for Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau. This is the courage of real leadership.
Thank you, Jill Stein, for standing up for the working classes of America. Certainly Obama, Romney, and the Congressional Republicans and most Democrats won't stand up for the working and middle classes of America since they are all on the corporate payroll of these financiers.
The Barefoot AccountantDr. Jill Stein, the Green Party's 2012 Candidate for President, was arrested for... more
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Once again, NYPigs show their attempts to intimidate and stifle free speech. Amerikkkan browns shirts wear blue.Once again, NYPigs show their attempts to intimidate and stifle free speech.... more
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"Saturday, July 28, 11:30am
Premiere of Occupy Brooklyn TV
Brooklyn cable TV & streaming
Occupy Public Access TV is launching a new OWS TV show this week. It will air on TW channel 35, Cablevision channel 68, and RCN channel
83 in Brooklyn, and on Verizon cable channel 43 throughout NYC. A special edition of the show, with extra footage, will be published on occupypublicaccesstv.com."
It's as easy as ABC, let's push the envelope now!
http://www.facebook.com/OccupyPublicAccessTV"Saturday, July 28, 11:30am
Premiere of Occupy Brooklyn TV
Brooklyn cable TV... more
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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN's Piers Morgan last night that he doesn't "understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike, we’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe."
Bloomberg and The New York Times are both wrong:
In 2008, ten times more civilians regular people were killed by cops than cops were killed by perps.
In 2011, 72 cops were shot and killed in the entire U.S.; in L.A. County alone, cops shot and killed 54 suspects the same year--22 percent of those people were unarmed.
As Scott Reeder reported at Reason this morning, "Farmers, ranchers, commercial fishermen, loggers, garbage collectors, truck drivers, construction workers, pilots, steel workers, roofers, and others are far more likely to face death on the jobs than police or firefighters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics."
And as Choire Sicha wrote earlier this year, "2008 was the ten-year low for police officers being killed, and 2012 is, so far, year-to-date, down 49% from last year."New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN's Piers Morgan last night that he... more
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Occupy Live streamer catches zucotti security playing games on computer, and gets assaulted for it!Occupy Live streamer catches zucotti security playing games on computer, and gets... more
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Protests continue for Occupy movement in Spain
RNC Protest Group Wins Permits For Thousands-Strong Rally
Quebec student protest organizers kick off tour of Ontario campuses
Some Monte Rio neighbors fed up with Bohemian Grove protesters
OWS Protesters Return to Zuccotti to Honor Woody Guthrie; Clash with Police
Some arrests as LA police break up protestProtests continue for Occupy movement in Spain
RNC Protest Group Wins Permits For... more
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Jack Boyle is a heroic activist that is on hunger strike to bring attention to Trinity Church's refusal to forgive occupiers their trespassesJack Boyle is a heroic activist that is on hunger strike to bring attention to Trinity... more
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"From disorganized slackers to terrorists - the Occupy movement has seen its media image go from bad to worse over its nine months of existence. Protesters now even face accusations that they pose a threat not just to Corporate America, but to the country as a whole. But activists say it's all just scaremongering to stifle the movement.""From disorganized slackers to terrorists - the Occupy movement has seen its... more
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By Mary Wisniewski
CHICAGO | Sun May 20, 2012 7:53pm EDT
(Reuters) - Nearly 50 U.S. military veterans at an anti-NATO rally in Chicago threw their service medals into the street on Sunday, an action they said symbolized their rejection of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some of the veterans, many wearing military uniform shirts over black anti-war t-shirts, choked back tears as they explained their actions. Others folded an American flag while a bugle played "Taps," which is typically performed at U.S. military funerals.
"The medals are supposed to be for acts of heroism. I don't feel like a hero. I don't feel like I deserve them," said Zach LaPorte, who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.
LaPorte, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer from Milwaukee, said he enlisted in the Army at 19 because he felt there were few other options. At the time, he could not afford to stay in college.
"I witnessed civilian casualties and civilians being arrested in what I consider an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation," LaPorte said.
He said he was glad the United States had withdrawn its combat troops from Iraq, but said he did not believe the NATO military alliance was going to leave Afghanistan.
On Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen opened the two-day summit of the 26-member alliance saying there would be no hasty exit from Afghanistan.
Full story
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/20/us-nato-summit-veterans-idUSBRE84J0D520120520
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B-CEdMmwJ4By Mary Wisniewski
CHICAGO | Sun May 20, 2012 7:53pm EDT
(Reuters) - Nearly 50 U.S.... more
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Three hundred feminists blanketed the concrete in Washington Square Park last night, their attention focused by the now-familiar mic check. The “Raging Grannies” had just performed. A banner, framed by the park’s iconic arch, declared that the first NYC Feminist General Assembly, presented by Women Occupying Wall Street (WOWS), was in full swing.
After seven months of reporting on feminism and the work of women activists in the Occupy movement, I wanted to know: could this meeting be a model for how OWS collaborates with other social movements? Might I witness the forming of a new activist coalition, bringing SlutWalkers, Occupiers, second-wavers and radicals together to fight back against the assault on rights we know as the War on Women?
The assembly gathered activists of a wide range of ages, ethnicities, abilities and gender presentations, with a noticeable majority of cisgender (that is, non-transgender) white women. Not a single police officer looked on, a rarity for an OWS event.
We began in consciousness-raising knots of three. Facilitators from WOWS instructed us to speak in turn without interruption about our personal involvement with feminism. In my cluster, blushes and downturned eyes in response these big questions gradually turned into animated conversations when we fell into small talk: “When did you move to New York?” “Wasn’t May Day awesome?”
Later, we broke into larger circles to brainstorm goals, leading into an hour of intense discussions. As the sun set, speakers from each breakout group shared their results, echoing over the human microphone. Soon, the usual Occupy hand signals dissolved into vocal responses: applause, hoots, and shouting.
A few themes emerged: first, the need to fight the assault on reproductive freedom and second, the need to make feminism more inclusive of trans people, the disabled, incarcerated women, women of color, and “different discursive styles.”
Many goals presented were big-picture. We should fight capitalism, reclaim our history, unite with labor, and educate our kids about misogyny. There were some Occupy-style solutions: those whose voices dominate should “step back” for an entire meeting. Let’s have more feminist tweets from Occupy’s account. We should distribute free condoms, as an art project, all over the city. Men should notice when they are “mansplaining” (this one got a thunderous ovation).
Occasionally, the conversation got a little jargony: my group’s representative announced our rejection of the notion that we could even come up with a set number of goals in a timed scenario. “It’s a temporality that’s...anti-feminist!” she said, getting knowing laughs.
A number of speakers alluded to an uneasy alliance between OWS and mainstream feminism. “We want Occupy’s support fighting women’s issues,” one speaker said. “We are Occupy!” shouted someone from behind me. “When I was presenting the breakout group questions last night, a woman asked if we were trying to separate feminism from the purpose of the movement,” said Simran Sachdev, an organizer with WOWS. “What she was missing is how feminism is integral to the movement!” Occupy won’t create change, Sachdev said, “if it doesn't recognize the need to include the values of feminists, women, and transgender individuals.”
A push to inject feminism into Occupy and bring the action-oriented focus of OWS to feminist issues were the genesis for this General Assembly, which emerged from the Women Occupying Wall Street Caucus, a group forged in the early days of the Zuccotti Park occupation. Its members wanted to address oppressive behavior within their own ranks and pick the brains of experts on feminism.
“We have a lot to learn. Many of us are new to feminism,” said Lisa Rubenstein, one of the GA’s organizers. “This is the great thing about Occupy. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve learned in these eight months.”
In planning the GA, WOWS expanded its membership to include participants like Dior Vargas, who had bypassed Zuccotti Park entirely. “I felt that I couldn’t relate to OWS’s mission,” Vargas, who works in publishing, said. But organizing around feminist issues offered “a place where I could make a difference.” “As with all the previous movements, it doesn’t take very long before feminism becomes an obvious next step,” novelist Alix Shulman, another organizer told me. “It’s one thing to be alive for a great political movement as I was for the second wave, but to be able to do it twice in my lifetime is a huge privilege.”
The very public battles over reproductive rights all winter long provided the catalyst that pushed this group into high gear for the GA. “If there’s truly going to be a ‘war on women,' we need to form a peaceful army,” said Melanie Gold, a member of WOWS. Organizers said they didn’t want to kick start a new wave of feminism, but rather “a tsunami.”
Although this wasn’t the first feminist GA in Occupy history (activists in LA, DC and elsewhere have had women or feminist-centered GAs) it was the first in New York. Organizers wanted to emerge from the GA with a trajectory towards fighting back.
“You don’t have to agree on everything to work together and be productive,” Sachdev told me earlier this week, when I asked her how she’d feel if some attendees were fans of Occupy bête noire and high-profile Planned Parenthood donor Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
And after the report backs, announcements, and a final performance from Mahina Movement, there was plenty of energy, if not a concrete action plan.
Aspects of this GA offered a model for how Occupy can work with other progressive movements without accusations of “co-option” on either side. The fact that the organizers of the GA were both new to and familiar with Occupy meant that the attendees came from both inside and outside the movement, an example of horizontalism—rejecting hierarchy—in action. Beyond that, the GA reinforced the notion of Occupy as platform for ideas, rather than organization. The simple act of presenting feminist ideas in the Occupy format--in a public space, welcome to all, mingling with strangers beyond the reach of institutions--was refreshing and inspiring, the opening of a door of possibility, almost like the early days at Zuccotti Park. I realized with a start during the event that I’d never been in a public space that simply existed for feminist-minded conversation before, without a destination or goal or even work-oriented networking.
Will that door of possibility lead to a new coalition or plan for action? That remained unclear. None of the goals mentioned in the report-backs included targeted plans like “organize a sit-in in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops offices.” No specific march or strike or radical art project is in the works, and no one appeared as a representative from an established feminist organization to start building a formal coalition. At this point, the OWS ethos may not mesh with most institutional organizations, and perhaps that’s okay. What the feminists at the GA wanted more than a formal partnership was to keep converging and talking. So the one thing there will definitely be? Another GA.
When Rubenstein took a “temperature check” about how often participants wanted to gather, almost everyone present raised hands to indicate they wanted monthly feminist GAs. The organizers grinned. “Come back with an idea for an action that is both fun and uncomfortable,” Rubenstein exhorted the crowd before it dispersed.
http://www.thenation.com/article/167969/can-occupy-fight-back-against-war-womenThree hundred feminists blanketed the concrete in Washington Square Park last night,... more
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more videos to come as this unfolds, on occupytheplanet.org
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