Chicago college offers class on Occupy movement

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

CHICAGO — A Chicago college is offering a class on the Occupy movement.

Thirty-two undergraduate students are enrolled at Roosevelt University's "Occupy Everywhere" class. It's a three-credit political science course that looks at the movement.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports students' assignments include reading the movement's newspaper and attending their general assembly meetings, held near Roosevelt's downtown campus.

Leaders from the Chicago movement may present guest lectures, but being involved in the movement isn't a class requirement.

http://www.rrstar.com/news/x458337403/Chicago-college-offers-class-on-Occupy-movement

[FarCenter]

1. Lecture on Occupy Movement by Columbia University Professor Todd Gitlin to be held Feb. 23

Columbia professor of Journalism and Sociology Todd Gitlin, who is a frequent commentator on American politics and culture, will lecture on “Occupy and the Future of American Politics,” at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23 at Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

The lecture and Gitlin’s appearance coincide with a new undergraduate political science course called Occupy Everywhere, which is being held for the first time this semester on Roosevelt’s Chicago Campus. Offered at a time when American political scientists have been debating the impact that growing socio-economic inequalities are having on U.S. democracy, the course explores the Occupy movement and the political-economic order the movement is challenging through considerable literature review and research.

http://www.roosevelt.edu/News_and_Events/News_Articles/20120201-Gitlin.aspx

[RoccoR5955]

2. There will be many "occupy" lectures at this year's Left Forum

in NY at Pace University March 14-16. The theme of this year's conference is, "Occupy the System: Confronting Global Capitalism." Literally hundreds of seminars the whole weekend. Check http://www.leftforum.org for details.

[FarCenter]

3. Is there an overarching connection among hacktivism, anarchism, mass demonstrations, and occupy?

All these things are pointed to by commentators as part of some new movement against capitalist economic structures and dominant party political structures.

"Hacktivism", broadly speakiing has roots going back to at least the late '80s with the rise of personal computers, peer to peer data communications, open computing systems, open source, the "information wants to be free" movement, and the resistance to government controld of cryptography. Later, the growth of the hacker community, the Internet's "dumb network / intelligent edge" design philosophy, and the emergence of pirate sites all are included the phenomena. Wikileaks and anonymous are extensions of this sociotechnical trend, as is the use of social media in the Arab Spring.

"Anarchism" meanwhile has been developing through leaderless resistance organizations ranging from the fairly benign to the explictly terroristic dedicated to causes ranging from animal rights, environmentalism, anti-abortion, islamists, neo-Nazis, etc. Recently, these have been populated by persons very dedicated to single, narrow issues, and usually not involved with economic or broad governance issues.

"Mass demonstrations" are an old tactic used by left organizations, labor unions and protest groups for many purposes and causes. The color revolutions in eastern Europe are the best example, although demonstrations also played a large role in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.

"Occupy" seems to be some synthesis of these things. It relies on the social networking technologies of hactivism, the horigontal, leaderless organization of anarchist groups, and the mass demonstration tactic of collecting a large number of people to squat on some public or private real estate, sort of similar to the sit-in tactic of civil right and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.