Occupy isn’t dead:It has Evolved Into a Different Kind of Movement
March 31, 2014
It has Evolved Into a Different Kind of Movement
Occupy isn’t dead
by BURKELY HERMANN
Infamously, corporate mogul Arthur Jensen told Howard Beale in the movie Network that the “world is a business.” That was thirty-eight years ago. On September 17th 2011, a new movement was born to counter this ideology enshrined in neoliberal globalization, with its roots going back to an article in February 2010 by investigative journalist and activist David DeGraw, if not earlier: the occupy movement. The corporate media at first ignored the movement, but after it became such a powerful force, they couldn’t do so any longer, so they just ridiculed it to no end since it was opposed to the two-party system, the corporate-state nexis, committed to democratic practices and stayed leaderless. The movement stayed strong from September to December 2011, facing off police brutality, destruction of tents, etc… As documents show, the national government coordinated the effort to crackdown on this social justice movement with local police departments, which was a powerful use of the supposed ‘legitimate’ force of the state but it did not render the movement dead. [1]
Almost two and half years later, some think that Occupy Wall Street (OWS), which should be called the occupy movement in the United States is dead. This article tries to counter these notions, and set the record straight on the status of this social movement in the United States.
If you look up the words ‘occupy is dead’ on Startpage, a wonderful alternative search engine to monopolistic Google, all sorts of articles come up. There is no need to go through every one of them.
Rosie Gray, writing for the good-for-nothing entertainment site, BuzzFeed, declared absurdly in an almost tabloid fashion: “Occupy’s final implosion” was when trans* woman and Google employee, Justine Turney took over the @OccupyWallSt twitter account. After being blocked by this twitter account myself, and hearing from other occupy activists, I knew that this article was written in a way that distorted the truth in a disgusting way. An article in The New Republic, a crap-shoot liberal magazine barely worth reading, claimed that the movement in Turkey will be longer-lasting than Occupy Wall Street. An opinion piece on CNN’s website by Stephen Zune said that while Occupy gave voice to the 99%, it was ‘dead.’ Even an article on CounterPunch by sociologist Steven Sherman alluded to a conclusion: that Occupy is dead. I could go on and on with more and more articles, and those who say Occupy is dead.
LA forum:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/31/occupy-isnt-dead/
= new reply since forum marked as read
