by Illona Trogub “You are not poor when you have no money, you are poor when you have nothing to offer…” – Maria Choupis Maria Choupis, a founding member of a cashless goods and service network in Volos, Greece, is beginning to live in a sacred economy. Coincidentally, it’s a topic that packed over 300…
Category: Essays & Letters
Back To The Future: One More Argument For Non-Violent Action
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by Emily Lehr “Hope remains only in the most difficult task of all: to reconsider everything from the ground up, so as to shape a living society inside a dying society.” –Albert Camus It seems to me that the magic of Occupy lies in its origins. Consensus, dialogue, reclamation of space—these are the ways in…
UPDATE: A Repairable Racism Within Occupy Portland
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Please See Below for Update By Ahjamu Umi A few weeks ago, I wrote two articles on racism within the Occupy movement. Although I, and several people who responded to my articles, supplied several examples of how racism exists within the Occupy movement (simply because racism exists in every aspect of U.S. society and Occupy…
I Give Up. Almost.
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by Angela Davis I give up. Almost. Watching the news lately I have tried to think like an independent, conscious person. I make an effort to investigate, fact check, and use a critical eye to see through the hype and canned political soup we are spoon-fed every day. Just today, I was struck by the…
Soldiers for the Disenfutured
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by Robin Ryan Aren’t buzz words really what we’re talking about here? Anarchy, black bloc, cancer, democracy, empire, fascism: These are labels. And while labels might be necessary to bring a sense of compartmentalized order for our brains to store and correlate information, how terms are defined play a fluid role in the sorting. Whether…
Small Meetings, Germinating the Seeds of Democracy
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By Vargus Pike There is a side of the Occupy movement that does not consist of street marches and confrontations with police. It doesn’t involve the occupation of parks or shipyards. It is a side that receives little to no press, but in the end may be one of the most important aspects of the…
The Other Side
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By David Glenn Cox There is a common story to our lives. It is a story of love and loss, joys and regrets. We all share in these things equally and we are all locked inside of our times. It began as a simple conversation about how much things had changed in America since the…
Is the Black Bloc Synonymous to White Privilege?
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by The Autonomous Workers’ Group Within both the national and local Occupy movement there has been a great deal of rhetoric concerning the Black Bloc, calling it an act and mentality of masculine, white-privilege, typically as exercised by basement dwelling youth. Many have chosen to physically attempt to remove this element from the movement, or…
Good Shit with Illona: Sacrifice
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by illona Trogub This is Part Two of an on-going series about sustainability and what it looks like to actually start living instead of consuming. illona is an immigrant from the former USSR. She dreams of a better world and a united Cascadia. The black, glossy wet asphalt keeps my bike steady as I pedal…
Transparency vs. Security: The Two-Headed Beast
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By Adam Rothstein Another terminological quandary that Occupy has found itself snared within recently is the issue of Transparency Culture versus Security Culture. Similar to other issues that we are slowly teasing out, explaining, and working through, the impasse with this issue is that viewing the argument in opposing terms has formed a poor understanding…
