Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America

169 Pages·2012·3.5 MB·English

by  Writers for the 99%

© 2011 Writers for the 99%.
Published by OR Books, New York and London.
Visit our website at www.orbooks.com
First printing 2011.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress A catalog record for this book is
available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-935928-68-3 paperback ISBN 978-1-935928-64-5 e-book Typeset by Wordstop Technologies,
Chennai, India Printed by BookMobile in the United States and CPI Books Ltd in the United Kingdom. The
U.S. printed edition of this book comes on Forest Stewardship Council-certified, 30% recycled paper. The
printer, BookMobile, is 100% wind-powered.
Contents
Introduction
Beginnings
An Occupation is Born
The General Assembly
Brooklyn Bridge
60 Wall Street
Students and Unions
Living in the Square
Defending the Occupation
POCcupy—People of Color Occupy Wall Street Too!
At the Edge of the Square
Washington Square, Times Square
The Art of the Square
The Occupation Spreads
The Media, Occupied
Eviction
The Future of the Occupation
Day in the Life of the Square
Timeline of a Movement on the Move
Useful Contact Information
Writers for the 99%
Zuccotti Park Occupied
Introduction
This book is an account of the first months of the Occupy Wall Street movement
(OWS). It is the result of a collaborative process that began a month after OWS
had its first official action on September 17, 2011. Roughly sixty people—
students and teachers, writers and artists, workers and professionals, female,
male, people of color, white, old, young—have been involved in researching,
writing, illustrating and editing the text. Although we make no claim to having
produced an official or authorized narrative, many of us are active participants in
OWS. All of us support the movement.
The idea of writing this book was first raised at a meeting of OWS’s
Education and Empowerment working group, held in the public atrium at 60
Wall Street, where many of the committees involved in the occupation meet. The
suggestion was met with both interest and wariness. Some felt it was premature
to attempt writing such a document. Others worried that the book would present
itself, or be perceived as, an “official statement,” despite reassurances from those
working on it that they recognized claims to formal representation of a
horizontal movement such as OWS to be both inappropriate and impossible.
At a subsequent meeting, the Education and Empowerment group voted
against proceeding with the project. But those who remained enthusiastic about
the idea decided to form their own group and to continue meeting independently.
Members of this independent group still had several different and competing
notions of what the book should be. Some saw it as a compilation of voices from
the movement. Others envisioned an analysis of OWS’s initial successes and
failures. Still others wanted to write a handbook for future occupations. But all
agreed that, as far as possible, the book should allow OWS to speak for itself.
To this end, dozens of interviews were conducted with a diverse range of
people in and around the occupation. It is on this basis that we call this the
“inside story” of the action. Interviewees, along with any other interested parties,
were encouraged to attend the group’s editorial meetings which were held at 60
Wall Street and were open to anyone who showed up. And we circulated the
minutes of the meetings and the material we gathered to all who wanted to see it.
In the course of the project, participants generally tried to adopt OWS’s
method of decision-making—hand signs and all. This is not to say that we have
always successfully adhered to the model set forth by the movement–our
organization, like OWS, is an imperfect work in progress—but we have tried to
observe its principles of direct democracy, consensus-based decision making,
inclusiveness, and transparency.
As we go to press with this book, at the beginning of December 2011, many
aspects of the future course of Occupy Wall Street remain unclear. But one thing
is starkly evident: Under the banner “We are the 99%”, the protest has given
birth to America’s most important progressive movement since the civil rights
marches half a century ago. We hope, in the pages that follow, to tell the story of
that beginning.