Tag Archives: Occupy Wall Street

FEATURED
Photos: Wesleyan Takes Zuccotti Park at #OWS Anniversary

Now with live video from Doernberg ’13.

As we reported Monday, a small caravan of riled up Wes students and alumni hit up New York’s Zuccotti Park just in time for the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. According to the New York Times, at least 185 were arrested. According to aspiring social media journalist Ben Doernberg ’13, at least one of those was a Wesleyan student. Speaking of statistics, Ross Levin ’15 included another one in a Wesleying comment: “the first night of Occupy Wall St, 15% of the people sleeping in the park were Wes students.”

Because livestreaming the festivities isn’t enough, Doernberg sends in a gallery of photos, one video, and a guest post narrating his coverage of the happenings. Doernberg’s summary and gallery appear below. Scroll on if you love photos of NYPD cops looking grim.

[nggallery id=179]

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FEATURED
Right Freakin’ Now: Doernberg ’13 Films #OWS Anniversary

Happy first birthday, Occupy Wall Street! The movement to repair social and economic equality in America began one year ago today, when the initial occupation began in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park. A small coalition of Wes students was there that first week, with extensive Wesleying coverage appearing here and here. In the year since, Wesleyan has seen on-campus occupations, alumni (and presidential) perspectives, coverage by Ezra Silk ’10 and Rob Wohl ’11, academic discussions, student arrests, aborted Radiohead concerts, and quite a bit more.

Appropriately, a handful of Wes students are in New York right now, joining in the festivities. According to Reuters, over 100 protestors have been arrested, with at least on Wesleyan student reportedly among them. Resident livestreamer and bearded social media journalist Ben Doernberg ’13 has been livestreaming the experience all day, and you can follow along above or on U-Stream.

For more on the #OWS anniversary, here’s ongoing coverage from Slate, The Nation, and the New York Times.

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EVENT
Occupy is Occupying Wesleying. Again.

Occupy Wes:

For all the new frosh who wished they could’ve been part of all the radicalfreakinessthatwasOccupy (that is, the 1% of them not already from New York City), now’s the time to get excited. A group of students will be meeting today at 9pm in the University Organizing Center (that’s 190 High, all you youngsters) to plan a livestream viewing party/discussion for the upcoming debate between Chris Hedges and Crimethinc on “Occupy Tactics: Violence & Legitimacy in the Occupy Movement & Beyond” (planned for 9/12) as well as a trip down to NYC for the 1st anniversary of Occupy (events will be occurring from the 15th through the 17th of September).

tl;dr get your activist ass over to the UOC tonight at 9 pm.

Date: Thursday, September 6
Time: 9 pm
Place: UOC

Wes Students Return to NYC Streets for May Day

“The boss needs you – you don’t need the boss.”

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

Looking for a reason to ditch class? It’s raining – what more do you want? About 20 Wesleyan students (and two Middletown residents) who went up to New York City last night and this morning are living theirs right now. May 1, or “May Day” for those in the know, primarily celebrates 1) pole dancing and 2) walking instead of working. So it seemed like a natural choice for one of the Occupy movement’s major bids for a return to mainstream prominence – a General Strike.  From the Occupy Wall St. website:

While American corporate media has focused on yet another stale election between Wall Street-financed candidates, Occupy has been organizing something extraordinary: the first truly nationwide General Strike in U.S. history. Building on the international celebration of May Day, past General Strikes in U.S. cities like Seattle and Oakland, the recent May 1st Day Without An Immigrant demonstrations, the national general strikes in Spain this year, and the on-going student strike in Quebec, the Occupy Movement has called for A Day Without the 99% on May 1st, 2012. This in and of itself is a tremendous victory. For the first time, workers, students, immigrants, and the unemployed from 135 U.S. cities will stand together for economic justice.

Hopefully, students who arrived at Grand Central this morning didn’t have to deal with the machine-gun toting National Guard…Christ.

The main purpose post is mostly a collection of just a few of the metric ton of online resources for anyone who wants to track today’s happenings. Onwards:

There may be a sprinkling of updates to this post as the day progresses – many Wes students who went are in a text-message group to facilitate coordination, and I joined in so I could keep track from Middletown Home Base. If anything interesting comes up and I’m online, I’ll try to get it up here. As of 11 AM: WesKids who stayed overnight have rendezvoused with Tuesday arrivals, and are gathering in Bryant Park after marching along 51st St. That’s all for now; get back to work (or not).

Daniel Plafker ’15 (99% sure… get it?) has been spotted in the title photograph of a Guardian article on today’s protests.

After the jump: Ben “The Doernbeard” Doernberg ’13 is live-tweeting the events as he attends  them, as well as retweeting relevancies from the ground. Click through for highlights.

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Anti-Systemic Movements: the Zapatista Attitude

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Since Seattle, all anti-systemic movements acknowledge that the Zapatistas were the first wake-up call to react against Neoliberal Globalization. The Zapatista experience continues to be a source of inspiration everywhere. The Zapatista ¡Basta! reappeared in Occupy Wall Street as a sign of identity. Zapatismo itself can be described as an attitude. What are the nature and traits of such attitude? Can it be adopted by other movements seeking similar outcomes?
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Date: Wednesday, February 22
Time: 5 pm
Location: Career Center
Cost: Free

Uncharacteristically Serious Procrastination Destination du Jour: The Year in Photos

Salamé, finals lovers. Tired of working, but had your fill of Flash games and all those fucking cats? Today’s procrastination destination will hopefully prove both thought-provoking and a welcome respite (at the same time (somehow)) from studying and Microsoft Wording. In Focus, The Atlantic‘s blog of obscenely high-quality and high-significance photography, recently finished publication of their top 120 images summarizing 2011.

Curated by Alan Taylor, the stunning photography includes, as always, descriptions of the context of the photos, often answering the “what happened next?” question a few might raise. Photos in the series cover some of the year’s major events in what seems to be generally chronological order, including the Fukushima disaster, the end of the Space Shuttle era, major sporting events, more than one aviation accident, and a hell of a lot of angry people in the streets – photos from the Arab Spring (especially Egypt and Libya), European austerity protests, and the Occupy Wall Street movement dominate. Despite all of the above, it does does have its fair share of light-hearted or otherwise fun work.

The series was published in three parts of 40 photos each – check out one, two, and three in order for maximum continuity. For more In Focus collections, try out this series from the first two weeks at Zuccotti Park, VLADIMIR PUTIN, or this series (a hit online from last year) that I totally thought was from The Atlantic but is actually from Boston.com’s The Big Picture. [Friendly protip: you can scroll image-by-image using the left and right arrow keys, or j and k.]

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Tonight: Interest/Planning Meeting for a Direct Action Class!

Happy Monday afternoon, studentfolk. For any of you looking to next semester in a desperate attempt to avoid paying much attention to the current one, you might be interested in the news to follow.

About a week ago, Maxwell Hellmann ’13 and Dan Fischer ‘11.5 sent out an email message asking if students might be interested in a course concerning direct action, activism at large, and the radical social theories associated with both. The idea seemed popular and many students expressed interest, especially in light of all that OccuPie stuff you may have heard about this semester.

At the moment, students are planning on basing much of the course off of a syllabus by the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber, who taught a graduate seminar in “Direct Action and Radical Social Theory” his final semester at Yale.

To da best of my knowledge, this student forum is likely going to be taught under the official banner of the Anthropology department, though what makes up the bulk of the course is largely to be determined. Want to have a hand in that? Just interested in seeing if this is a course you might want to take? Skeptical that “direct action” even qualifies as action? Check out the meeting tonight – as numerous and wide a range of voices as possible would be appreciated.

Date: Today’s Date
Time: 11 P.M.
Place: UOC (190 High St., twixt Beta and Eclectic)

If you’re interested in a little more background or logistical information, click past the jump.

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Rob Wohl ’11 Occupies Russian Television

Rob’s message to the Wesleyan student body: “Drop out of college and occupy something.”

Given how much attention we’ve given to Wes alums commenting on the Occupy movement from afar, it’s nice to hear from one recent grad taking a direct role in the movement itself, with scathing conviction and a trademark look of rage I haven’t seen since Lightning Bolt occupied Eclectic.

In between his day job as a research fellow at Medicare and Social Insurance Works in DC, former Argus overlord and part-time Rocktimist Rob Wohl ’11 seems to have taken an active role with the Occupy DC Action Team. Earlier this week, Wohl appeared on RT, a prominent Russian news channel, discussing the current state of economic affairs, the future of Occupy Wall Street, and whether or not OWS warrants comparison with the Tea Party Movement. “We will do what’s necessary to interrupt this system,” says Wohl on cable television. “We want the members of Congress to know that we demand meaningful, powerful, overwhelming change in this country.”

As Ezra Silk ’10 puts it over at America Occupied: “Rob, I knew that one day I would see you play the revolutionary on Russian television. I just never knew it would happen this soon.” (Wohl also contributed a piece to Silk’s blog a few days prior.) Here’s the video interview:

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Occupying Wall Street After Graduation, Or Not

From occupier to occupied, here’s the mostly undiscussed crew of the Occupy movement (not pictured): the college students more interested in occupying Wall Street after graduation—with a job in finance, that is—and the recruiters who each year seek to woo them. A recent New York Times feature piece casts its gaze on the annual ritual of on-campus finance recruiting at top schools as it contends with the wrath of the Occupy movement. (Admittedly, maybe students on this campus are as likely to travel cross-country documenting the Occupy movement as they are to seek jobs on Wall Street after graduation. I know very few Wesleyan students openly seeking to go into finance, but that probably has as much to do with selection bias [and academic departments] as it does Wesleyan.)

At some schools, protestors have redirected their anger towards on-campus Wall Street recruitment efforts as well as the system that fuels it. Our neighbors in New Haven have experienced the tumult:

“I teach financial markets, and it’s a little like teaching R.O.T.C. during the Vietnam War,” said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University. “You have this sense that something’s amiss.”

Turns out you don’t need have to head to New York to occupy Wall Street when Wall Street is occupying your campus, as it does year after year:

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Ah, Journalism

Ouch.

I say as much in the close of my “Occupy Wesleyan: A Retrospective” post, but since I highly doubt many of you will make it to the end, here it is again (yes, I quote myself; I’m just that meta):

An interesting case study in how a mistake can reproduce itself: the Middletown Press reported that it was the REAL MRoth who revoked Hickenlooper’s diploma–a story that was promptly picked up by the Denver Post, where it is running on the front page of the site.

Thanks to commenters “BC” and “Colorado”!

An update: the Denver Post has since altered its article to reflect the actual events.

Luckily, we have screenshots after the jump!

Update, part deux: some do-gooder has since changed Hickenlooper’s wikipedia page, citing the Middletown Press/Denver Post articles, to reflect Roth’s supposed revocation.

Again, screenshot appears after the jump.

Updat3: And, at long last, the Middletown Press story has been changed. At least they mention their correction (vs. the Denver Post, which pretends it had it right all along)…

Also, be sure to check out the respective comments sections in the above links… they’re priceless.

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