Activism

Throw them out with the trash

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What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets — not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in Sarasota, Florida, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that makes it illegal to”engage in digging or earth-breaking activities” — that is, to build a latrine — cook, make a fire, or be asleep and “when awakened state that he or she has no other place to live.”

#Occupy – BACKGROUND – Oct 23

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– The Economist: Leaderless, consensus-based participatory democracy and its discontents
– Intellectual Roots of Wall St. Protest Lie in Academe
– Athenian Democracy
– A brief history of consensus decision-making (Quakers and pirates)
– Naomi Wolf:The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society

#Occupy – Oct 23

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– Barbara Ehrenreich: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue
– At Zuccotti Park, Conflict Arises Among Occupiers
– Michael Kinsley: Four Iron-Clad Demands for OWS
– Global indignation inspires Spanish movement
– Chinese web censors block terms related to “Occupy,” to stamp out movement’s spread in China

#Occupy – ANALYSIS – Oct 22

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– How Occupy Wall Street Really Got Started
– From Protest to Disruption: Frances Fox Piven on Occupy Wall Street
– What ‘Diversity of Tactics’ Really Means for Occupy Wall Street
– Could the Occupy Movement’s General Assemblies Replace Today’s Parliaments and Legislatures?
– What can OWS learn from a defunct French avant-garde group? (Situationists)

Whether in Egypt or America, it takes organization to win

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In its purest form, politics in a democracy is about the contest for power. The best ideas don’t always win, nor do the most deserving candidates or causes. It is the side that organizes the best and mobilizes its voters most effectively that carries the day and takes power.

This is a lesson we learned in 1981, and it is lesson that is being learned in the Arab Spring states of Tunisia and Egypt where elections will soon decide which side initially takes power and reaps the benefits of the popular mobilizations that led to the downfall of the regimes that governed for decades.

What Occupy Wall Street can learn from the Singing Revolution

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Drawing strength from the rage of the masses is not a formula for longevity, especially in a consumer culture, where rage shifts seasonally…Just ask the veterans of the great uprisings of 1968. We still wonder, what became of our revolution? Rather than being adopted by everyone, it unified the opposition, and while it made some milestones, especially in the popular culture, it missed its political mark by a wide mile.

The first review of ‘The Transition Companion’

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I read so many books about peak oil, the state of the world, and environmental degradation that I often glaze over. This one is different. It has authority born from practical experience, a musculature that is immediately engaging, even reassuring. It feels mature. The book is not afraid to catalogue the limitations and failures, even celebrate them, as well as the successes. I like the way the book was crowd sourced. Rob blogged on each Transition Tool and invited feedback and ideas. The participatory aspect brings it alive: here is more than one visionary man’s voice but a whole chorus of voices.

How to frame yourself: a framing memo for Occupy Wall Street

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It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.

Becoming Legion: Are the Occupations a brief preoccupation or the sign of a world-altering transformation?

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We may be witnessing the next stage in the evolution of revolutions, one that could bring Life-honoring, Lifelike democratic powers, freedoms and relationships to peoples around the world. Described by its uppercrustian decriers as 2nd gen hippy activism, Occupy has given them the lie…The present system’s trespasses, shortcomings, ineptitudes and injustices have catalyzed a 21st century melting pot moment, almost a Bastille-storming sort of moment. Never in American history has such a diversity of Americans spoken as if in one voice, crying “Foul!”