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Charting Hybridised Realities:  Tactical Cartographies for a densified present In the midst of an enquiry into the legacies of Tactical Media - the fusion of art, politics, and media which had been recognised in the middle 1990s as a particularly productive mix for cultural, social and political activism [1], the year 2011 unfolded. The enquiry had started as an extension of the work on the Tactical Media Files, an on-line documentation resource for tactical media practices worldwide [2], which grew out of the physical archives of the infamous Next 5 Minutes festival series on tactical media (1993 - 2003) housed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. After making much of tactical media's history accessible again on-line, our question, as editors of the resource, had been what the current significance of the term and the thinking and practices around it might be? Prior to 2011 this was something emphatically under question. The Next 5 Minutes festival series had been ended with the 2003 edition, following a year that had started on September 11, 2002, convening local activists gatherings named as Tactical Media Labs across six continents. [3] Two questions were at the heart of the fourth and last edition of the Next 5 Minutes: How has the field of media activism diversified since it was first named 'tactical media' in the middle 1990s? And what could be significance and efficacy of tactical media's symbolic interventions in the midst of the semiotic corruption of the media landscape after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? This 'crash of symbols' for obvious reasons took centre stage during this fourth and last edition of the festival. Naomi Klein had famously claimed in her speedy response to the horrific events of 9/11 that the activist lever of symbolic intervention had been contaminated and rendered useless in the face of the overpowering symbolic power of the terrorist attacks and their real-time mediation on a global scale. [4] The

The Crisis and The Way Out Of It: What We Can Learn From Occupy Wall Street Posted on October 8, 2011 The Occupy Wall Street movement more effectively addresses the cause of the financial crisis than economists and discussions in the mainstream press. Further, this movement embodies democratic solutions for a way beyond the crisis. This essay focuses on Occupy Wall Street's facilitating of political action from disparate, heterogeneous partisans; increasing of transparency and participation in decision-making; and relying upon both human-scaled and participatory technologies. Through these processes, the Occupy Wall Street micro-community embodies a vision for a pluralistic, direct democratic society and demonstrates it through practice. Three years into an economic recession that rivals the Great Depression, economists are scrambling for explanations of its origins and the steps to take. Congressperson Darrel Issa (R-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, blames unaffordable housing and political kickbacks from the banking industry. He stresses the need to "return to fiscal discipline and prudent, responsible   housing policies"(Issa, 2011, p. 419). Gary B. Gorton of the Yale School of Management traces an added cause to the "parallel" banking system and a banking panic that began in August 2007 (2010, p. 2). Former economist at Freddie Mac and the Federal Reserve and current Cato Institute adjunct, Arnold Kling, blames capital regulations and "cognitive failures" of executives in financial institutions. It may not be surprising to the reader that this employee of a libertarian think-tank advocates for deregulation and expects the public to "not be deceived into believing that regulatory foresight can be as keen as regulatory hindsight" (Kling, 2011, p. 517). Ten-year veteran CEO and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and current Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute blames "a failu

Occupy Wall Street é o movimento mais importante do mundo hoje DOSSIER | 16 OUTUBRO, 2011 - 02:26 | POR NAOMI KLEIN "Porque estão eles a protestar?", perguntam-se os confusos comentadores da TV. Enquanto isso, o mundo pergunta: "porque vocês demoraram tanto? A gente estava a querer saber quando é que vocês iam aparecer." E, acima de tudo, o mundo diz: "bem-vindos". Foi uma honra, para mim, ter sido convidada a falar em Occupy Wall Street na 5ª-feira à noite. Dado que os amplificadores estão (infelizmente) proibidos, e o que eu disser terá de ser repetido por centenas de pessoas, para que outros possam ouvir (o chamado "microfone humano"), o que vou dizer na Praça Liberty Plaza terá de ser bem curto. Sabendo disso, distribuo aqui a versão completa, mais longa, sem cortes, da minha fala. Occupy Wall Street é a coisa mais importante do mundo hoje. Eu amo-vos. E eu não digo isso só para que centenas de pessoas gritem de volta "eu também te amo", apesar de que isso é, obviamente, um bónus do microfone humano. Diga aos outros o que você gostaria que eles lhe dissessem, só que bem mais alto. Ontem, um dos oradores na manifestação dos trabalhadores disse: "Nós encontramo-nos uns aos outros". Esse sentimento captura a beleza do que está a ser criado aqui. Um espaço aberto (e uma ideia tão grande que não pode ser contida por espaço nenhum) para que todas as pessoas que querem um mundo melhor se encontrem umas às outras. Sentimos muita gratidão. Se há uma coisa que sei, é que o 1% adora uma crise. Quando as pessoas estão desesperadas e em pânico, e ninguém parece saber o que fazer: eis aí o momento ideal para nos empurrar goela abaixo a lista de políticas pró-corporações: privatizar a educação e a segurança social, cortar os serviços públicos, livrar-se dos últimos controles sobre o poder corporativo. Com a crise económica, isso está a acontecer em todo o mundo. Só existe uma coisa que pode bloquea

Ocupar Wall Street: o que todos querem saber sobre o movimento DOSSIER | 16 OUTUBRO, 2011 - 01:55 É um colectivo de activistas, sindicalistas, artistas, estudantes. Para muitos norte-americanos, essa acção directa e não violenta é a única oportunidade que resta para terem alguma voz política. Por Nathan Schneider, The Nation. Ouvi dizer que o grupo Adbusters organizou o movimento Occupy Wall Street? Ou os Anonymous? Ou US Day of Rage? Afinal, quem os juntou todos? Todos esses grupos participaram. Adbusters fez a convocação inicial em meados de Julho, e produziu um cartaz muito sexy, com uma bailarina fazendo uma pirueta no lombo da estátua do Grande Touro, com a polícia anti-tumultos no fundo. O grupo US Day of Rage, criação da estrategista de Tecnologias da Informação Alexa O'Brien, que existe quase exclusivamente na Internet, também se envolveu e fez quase todo o trabalho inicial de encontros e pelo Tweeter. O grupo Anonymous - com as suas múltiplas, incontáveis e multiformes máscaras - agregou-se no final de Agosto. Mas em campo, em Nova York, quase todo o planeamento foi feito pelo pessoal envolvido na Assembleia Geral de NYC. É um colectivo de activistas, artistas, estudantes, que se reunira antes na campanha "New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts" [Novaiorquinos contra os cortes no orçamento]. Essa coligação de estudantes e sindicalistas acabou de levantar a ocupação de três semanas perto do City Hall, que recebeu o nome de Bloombergville, na qual protestaram contra os planos do presidente da câmara, de demissões e cortes no orçamento da cidade. Aprenderam muito naquela experiência e estavam ansiosos para repetir a dose, desta vez em movimento mais ambicioso, aspirando a ter mais impacto. Mas, de fato, não há ninguém, nem grupo nem pessoa, a comandar toda a ocupação de Wall Street. Ninguém manda? Ninguém é responsável? Como se tomam as decisões? A própria Assembleia Geral tomou as decisões para a ocupação na

#AMERICANAUTUMN What 'diversity of tactics' really means for Occupy Wall Street by Nathan Schneider | October 19, 2011, 12:02 pm Occupy Wall Street marchers watch from the pedestrian walkway as hundreds of their comrades take to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. Even as Occupy Wall Street shapes the public conversation about high finance, political corruption, and the distribution of wealth, it has also raised anew questions about how resistance movements in general should operate. I want to consider one of the matters that I've thought about a lot over the past month while watching the occupation and its means of making its presence felt on the streets of New York and in the media. "Diversity of tactics," in the context of political protests, is often treated as essentially a byword for condoning acts of violence. The phrase comes by this honestly; it emerged about a decade ago at the height of the global justice movement, especially between the 1999 demonstrations that shut down a WTO meeting in Seattle and those two years later in Quebec. While all nonviolent movements worth their salt will inevitably rely on a variety of tactics-for instance, Gene Sharp's list of 198 of them-using the word "diversity" was a kind of attempted détente between those committed to staying nonviolent and those who weren't. Consider this characterization by George Lakey: "Diversity of tactics" implies that some protesters may choose to do actions that will be interpreted by the majority of people as "violent," like property destruction, attacks on police vehicles, fighting back if provoked by the police, and so on, while other protesters are operating with clear nonviolent guidelines. Those who extoll the importance of total nonviolent discipline-as Lakey eloquently goes on to do-might be disappointed to learn that Occupy Wall Street has made "diversity of tactics" its official modus operandi. However, the way that the occu

 was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a.k.a. "the human microphone"), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech. I love you. And I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you" back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder. Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful. If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over. And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it's a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say "No. We will not pay for your crisis." That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began. "Why are they protesting?" ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: "What took you so long?" "We've been wondering when you were going to show up." And most of all: "Welcome." Many people have drawn parallels bet