by Shawn Fleek and Adam Rothstein Feb 29th: Shut Down ALEC from Kontra on Vimeo. On February 29th, Shut Down The Corporations plans a nationwide day of action to draw attention to the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) a group which uses the money of large corporations to pass favorable legislation in all 50 states.…
Category: Headlines
F29 Direct Action Training: This is What Democracy Looks Like
by Pranksterbtch On Saturday, February 4, members of a group called the Portland Action Lab (PAL) conducted a teach-in entitled the “#F29 Direct Action Training” seminar. The goal of this citizens training session was to share PAL’s de-escalation tactics during planned citizen actions such as the upcoming nationwide protest against corporations on February 29, 2012.…
Hanford: North America’s Fukushima
by Miriam German The Occupy Portland rally, Hanford: North America’s Fukushima, came about from a simple request from an Occupier originally from Tri-Cities. My friend called me one night to ask if we could do something about the Hanford Nuclear Waste Site. Anything. She called me because as well as being a musician, I’ve been…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Solidarity
by Natasha Stoudt Over the past couple of weeks, the internet has exploded with responses to Chris Hedges’ article “The Cancer in Occupy.” I’m going to sidestep the issue of what was wrong or right with Hedges’ article or the many responses to it, and focus on the deeper subject of the debate it spawned:…
A Contract is a Contract: Clarifying the ILWU/EGT Outcome in Longview
by Chris Lowe A contract is a contract… In a previous item in The Occupier, Lester Macgurdy argued that we should not exaggerate the victory achieved by ILWU Local 21 in Longview in their struggle against union-busting and scab labor employed by EGT/Bunge. Nor should we overblow Occupy’s achievement in affecting the outcome, lest we…
It’s Not About the Money! (Part 3)
by Rich Cohen In recent opinion editorials I spoke to the necessity of restoring citizen control over our country with a congressional district electoral strategy that gets us the majority numbers needed to actually govern. I outlined how we ought to do it and our capacity to get it done. Yet the most meaningful and…
Harvard Community Protests Library Cut
This article is from the Occupied Media news wire. It was originally published over at the Boston Occupier. by Julie Walsh On the evening of Thursday, February 16, a circle of about forty picketers marched outside Harvard University’s Lamont Library, chanting and waving signs in an intermittent drizzle. The group had gathered to protest the…
Protest and Movement: What This Means for Occupy
by David “Däv” O’Bryant Protest and Movement: Distinctions Political protest, whether with an aim toward raising social consciousness within the broad public or with that of challenging authority in the hopes of pressuring power to concede to demand, sometimes (though by no means always) occurs within the framework of a wider protest movement. Unlike specific…
Why Prison is Profitable
by Ahjamu Umi I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the politics of imprisonment and comparative economics. The imprisonment portion of the 70 page research centered on the state of California, where I lived at the time, and the 160,000 people who are imprisoned there. My research confirmed the obvious facts. Eight out of ten people…
Will Occupy Spring Forward Or Melt Down?
By Shamus Cooke A healthy debate has finally gripped the Occupy Movement: there is now a discussion over strategy. Most Occupiers have learned that raw enthusiasm alone cannot bring victory to a social movement; ideas matter too. Action divorced from strategy equals wasted energy, divisiveness, diversions and unnecessary mistakes. Not all tactics push the movement…
