by Chris Bergsten I have a radical proposal for Occupiers: let’s support a Presidential candidate. Barack Obama rose to the presidency by appealing to the nation’s desire for progress and change. In a time when eight years under President George W. Bush saw us embroiled in illegitimate wars, belligerent foreign policy, a growing police state…
Category: Essays & Letters
It’s Only An Apocalypse When the Zombies Fight Back
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This article was original published on The State. by Adam Rothstein Before I even finish writing the phrase, “zombie apocalypse”, there is a good chance you’re horrified—by culturally over-determined boredom, rather than by monsters. The fantasy of the zombie outbreak is becoming ploddingly dull, fired into our crowded consciousness again and again, like rounds from…
AFL-CIO Declares Victory in Wisconsin in the Face of Defeat
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By Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer In the wake of the Wisconsin elections and the failure to unseat Governor Walker, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has issued a victory statement of sorts, resorting to the most tortured and convoluted logic. For starters, Trumka proclaimed that, “Wisconsin took back its Senate.” Although he did not explain exactly…
The Maple Spring and the Mafiocracy: Struggling Students versus “Entitled Elites”
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by Andrew Gavin Marshall It says a great deal about our society when hundreds of thousands of students – already largely indebted, a significant portion of whom live well below the poverty line, who already work what few jobs exist for a generation forgotten before we leave home – take to the streets in protest…
Flash Encampments
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This article was originally published on Adbusters. Hey all you wild cats, do-gooders and steadfast rebels out there, Our movement is living through a painful rebirth… “There has been a unfortunate consolidation of power in #OWS,” writes one founding Zuccotti. “This translates into ideological dominance and recurring lines of thought. We are facing a nauseating…
A Letter to Mayor Sam Adams and his Portland Police
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by The Organizers To Mayor Sam Adams, Portland Police: People of the City of Portland, representing all walks of life, will gather in Pioneer Square at 7:00pm on June 11, 2012 to express solidarité with people in Québec and around the world who are asserting their rights to education without lifelong debt-slavery. This event will…
Eviction Court
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by Lauren Paulson Eviction Court Any way you look at it, you don’t want to be there. Eviction Court. First floor of the Multnomah County Courthouse. It is a desultory place. The welcome mat is not there for you. To get in you have to get naked. Well almost. There is a gauntlet of ten…
How the Democrats Exploit Occupy
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By Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer There has been much talk about attempts by various organizations such as the Democratic Party and some top officials in organized labor to co-opt Occupy in order to steer this movement in directions beneficial to themselves. Such attempts can hardly be surprising, given the use that many in the…
Let’s Take Uncle Sam and Uncle Scrooge off Life-Support (Us)
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By Elona Trogub Capitalists are great at making money but they’re terrible at predicting the future. All those dollar signs get in the way of seriously looking at the long-term consequences of their actions. Our government is run by and for capitalists. That’s why the U.S. spends half of the global total on militarization. Capitalism…
Imagining the Post-Occupy Social Movement
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by Shamus Cooke If one were to honestly assess Occupy’s current strengths and weaknesses as a movement, confusion must be the inevitable result. This is because Occupy is not one movement, but an umbrella term that encompasses several different groups that have varied aims, organizational structures, and gaping theoretical differences. Occupy may not be dead,…
