OCUPE A PIEDADE

Um Nobel de Economia explica Occupy Wall StreetBY ADMIN - 08/11/2011POSTED IN: DESTAQUES Para Joseph Stiglitz, movimento quer pouco, em termos econômicos. Mas reivindica democracia não-controlada pelo dinheiro - por isso é revolucionário Por Joseph Stiglitz | Tradução: Antonio Martins O movimento de protesto que começou na Tunísia em janeiro e se espalhou em seguida para o Egito e a Espanha tornou-se agora global. Os protestos abraçaram Wall Street e dezenas de cidades nos Estados Unidos. A globalização e as novas tecnologias permitem aos movimentos sociais vencer fronteiras tão rapidamente quanto as ideias. E os protestos sociais encontraram terreno fértil em toda a parte. Um sentimento de que "o sistema" faliu, e a convicção de que, mesmo nas democracias, o processo eleitoral não é suficiente - ao menos, sem forte pressão das ruas. Em maio, estive no local onde se deram protestos, na Tunísia. Em julho, falei para os indignados da Espanha. De lá, fou ao Cairo, encontrar os jovens revolucionários na Praça Tahrir. Há algumas semanas, falei com o pessoal do Occupy Wall Street, em Nova York [foto]. Uma frase simples, criada por eles, expressa um pensamento comum: "Somos 99%". O slogan ecoa no título de um artigo que recentemente publiquei: "Do 1%, para o 1% e pelo 1%". Ele descreve o enorme aumento de desigualdade nos Estados Unidos, onde 1% da população controla mais de 40% da riqueza e recebe mais de 20% da renda. E os que pertencem a este grupo rarefeito são frequentemente remunerados, de forma extravagante, não por terem contribuído para a sociedade, mas porque são, para dizer de forma franca, bem-sucedidos (e às vezes corruptos) caçadores de rendas alheias. Esta afirmação não nega que alguns entre o 1% tenha feito contribuições importantes à sociedade. Na verdade, os benefícios sociais de algumas inovações reais (ao contrário dos "produtos" financeiros que acabaram desencadeando destruição na econo

A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street by GEORGE LAKOFF on OCTOBER 19, 2011 in COMMUNICATION, NEWS, POLITICAL MIND I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It's a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you - the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself. About framing: It's normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act. In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it's wrong! Or because it doesn't matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda. Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this

Ernesto Laclau An interview with Ernesto Laclau READ LATER Ernesto Laclau talks to the Greek journal Intellectum about the uses of populism, why radical democracy has nothing to do with liberalism, and how lack of political competition benefits the far-Right. Intellectum: In probably your most famous book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, co-authored with Chantal Mouffe, you attempted to deconstruct both Marxist theory and liberal democratic thought in order to reinterpret them in such a way that they could contribute to a more sufficient understanding of contemporary politics. What is the significance of the concept of identity for the comprehension of modern reality? Ernesto Laclau: Well I think that the concept of identity can be analysed from different sides. One side would be to identify identity with particularity. There are some difficulties obviously in this type of identification of the two categories. But there are also advantages, because obviously the political problem that presents itself is a problem of general articulation, and general articulation has to rely on some kind of category of identity. So this is the way in which the question of identity emerges today. It can be related to a variety of intellectual contexts, but I think that the essential point is that there are no obvious forms of universality that can replace the notion of identity. Intellectum: In your first book Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (1977), you discussed the phenomenon of populism. In 2005 you published On Populist Reason. It seems that populism has remained at the centre of your interest. In a country that is governed by a populist party, what can we assume about the political identity of that people? How is popular subjectivity constructed? EL: I think we have to introduce a classical distinction: the distinction between populus and plebs. Populus is the totality of the community; plebs are those at the bottom of the social pyramid. A characteristic of plebeian

Universidad Nomada Info]http://centrodeestudios15m.blogspot.com/2011/12/jornada-procomun-e-instituciones.html JORNADA: Procomún e instituciones monstruo: nuevos modos de pensar y producir autonomíaSaludos! os invitamos el próximo martes 13 de diciembre a las jornadas que organiza el Centro deEstudios 15M junto a la Asociación de Estudiantes de Filosofía (ASEFI), en colaboración con elAula-Debate de Cultura de la Universidad de Murcia. Martes 13 de diciembre de 17:00 a 21:00 horas, Salón de Grados de la Facultad de Derecho, Campusde la Merced, Murcia: 17:00 h.  Conferencia "¿Qué es eso del procomún?", Antonio Lafuente (Instituto de Ciencias Humanas ySociales del CSIC)   18:00 h.  Conferencia "La autoformación y la experiencia de las universidades anómalas en la era de lacrisis", Tomás Herreros (Universidad Nómada).   19:00 h.  Mesa redonda "Gestionar lo común":Modera:  Tomás Saorín, presidente de Anabad-Murcia y profesor en la Facultad de ComunicaciónIntervienen:  Antonio Lafuente, Tomás Herreros, Gabriel Navarro (miembro del Foro Ciudadano y miembro delgrupo promotor del Pacto por la Transparencia y el Buen Gobierno de la Región de Murcia yJavier Fuentes (Director del  CENDEAC) Coordinan: Antonio Hidalgo y Tomás Saorín-Transmisión: http://tv.um.es/directo -hagstag #procomun en Twitter

Reinventando la política: 15M MONTSERRAT GALCERÁN. Militante social, ensayista y profesora de Filosofía Miércoles 28 de septiembre de 2011. Decían los clásicos que nada hay tan improbable e ilusorio como una revolución antes de que acontezca, ni nada es más evidente y necesario después de que estalle. Sea o no una revolución lo que estamos viviendo, ya casi ni nos acordamos de cómo era el mundo antes de que existiera el 15M. Nada era más improbable entonces, ni nada nos hace dudar ahora de que el movimiento continuará. Es, como dice David Harvey, un rayo de esperanza y de luz en el horizonte del depredador y salvaje capitalismo global. Dos éxitos marcan el presente del movimiento: la constitución emergente de un nuevo actor político y su efecto en la descomposición de la casta política dominante. Esos dos elementos nos permiten hablar propiamente del final de un ciclo político, aquel que se abrió en este país con la Transición y que en Europa viene marcado por el final de los movimientos de 1968 en los últimos '70. También del inicio del fin del periodo siguiente: la hegemonía indiscutida de un neoliberalismo que nos ha llevado al desastre actual. Las movilizaciones populares de estos últimos meses, empezando por lo sucedido en los países del norte de África y siguiendo por el área mediterránea, Grecia, Portugal y España marcan la emergencia de un actor político multitudinario que ha encontrado en las asambleas populares uno de los resortes de su acción. Los otros son una práctica novedosa en la comunicación, especialmente en las redes sociales, y una forma de hacer política basada en el rechazo de la representación/delegación y la asunción de la capacidad de cada quien para incidir, participar, reflexionar, aportar, matizar y decidir. Esta práctica produce empoderamiento y aumenta la pasión por lo político, a mil leguas del hartazgo y la agitación artificial de los mítines oficialistas. Se equivocan quienes piensan que

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

POST A COM­MENT RE­SIZE TEXT + | - | R PLAIN TEXT PRINT SHARE EMAIL It all started with an e-mail. On July 13 Ad­busters mag­a­zine sent out a call to its 90,000-strong list pro­claim­ing a Twit­ter hash­tag (#Oc­cu­py­Wall­Street) and a date, Sep­tem­ber 17. It quickly spread among the mostly young, tech-savvy rad­i­cal set, along with an es­pe­cially al­lur­ing poster the mag­a­zine put to­gether of a bal­le­rina atop the Charg­ing Bull statue, the fi­nan­cial dis­trict's totem to testos­terone. The idea be­came a meme, and the angel of his­tory (or at least of the In­ter­net) was some­how ready. Halfway into a rev­o­lu­tion­ary year-after the Arab Spring and Eu­rope's tu­mul­tuous sum­mer-cy­ber­ac­tivists in the United States were primed for a piece of the ac­tion. The Ad­busters ed­i­tors weren't the only ones or­ga­niz­ing; sim­i­lar oc­cu­pa­tions were al­ready in the works, in­clud­ing a very well-laid plan to oc­cupy Free­dom Plaza in Wash­ing­ton, start­ing Oc­to­ber 6. Web­sites cropped up to gather news and an­nounce­ments. U.S. Day of Rage, the Twit­ter- and web-dri­ven pro­ject of a de­ter­mined IT strate­gist, en­dorsed the ac­tion, pro­moted it and started prepar­ing with on­line non­vi­o­lence train­ings and tac­ti­cal plans. Then, in late Au­gust, the hack­tivists of Anony­mous signed on, post­ing men­ac­ing videos and flood­ing so­cial media net­works. But a meme alone does not an oc­cu­pa­tion make. An oc­cu­pa­tion needs peo­ple on the ground. By early Au­gust, a band of ac­tivists in New York began meet­ing in pub­lic parks to plan. Many were fresh off the streets of Bloombergville, a three-week en­camp­ment near City Hall in protest of lay­offs and cuts to so­cial ser­vices. Oth­ers joined them, es­pe­cially artists, stu­dents and an­ar­chists-aca­d­e­mic and oth­er­wise. (US Day of Rage's founder wa

Capitalism and the Wall Street Protesters November 19, 2011 Dominick T. Armentano With at least 12 compulsory years in public schools, one would think that most of the twenty-something Wall Street protesters would have some understanding of capitalism, its actual history, and its accomplishments. Well, maybe not. One can only wonder what passes for economic education these days. So what is capitalism? Free market capitalism is based on the individual right to own and freely trade property. It permits owners of property (land, labor, capital, etc.) to enter (or exit) any contract on mutually agreeable terms. It gives entrepreneurs the freedom to start any business (without government permission) and to borrow money and develop products for consumers. It permits land owners to rent (or sell) their property for any peaceful purpose. It gives adult workers the liberty to lease their services to any business at any agreeable wage and to terminate that agreement at will; employers would have the same right. Capitalism allows firms to compete (and cooperate) with other firms; it allows firms to succeed and reinvest their profits; it allows firms to make losses and fail and go out of business. It allows consumers to choose any product or service and allows parents to educate their children in any manner and for any length of time that they decide is appropriate. Under capitalism, there would be no government bailouts; no Federal Reserve; no Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac; no state restrictions on competition (so-called antitrust laws); no tax-supported schools and no government supported monopolies of any kind. Crony capitalism, after all, is not real capitalism. As should be apparent, a capitalistic economic system is grounded on individual liberty. When and if individual rights are violated under capitalism (theft, harmful pollution, contract defaults, protesters breaking store windows) it would be legitimate to prosecute and punish rights-violaters (criminals) under the

danieltutt.com The #Occupy Movement and Gramsci OCT. 16, 2011 READ LATER As we enter the second or third week of the #Occupy movement, I'm beginning to sense that the momentum is no longer an issue. The movement seems to have gotten past the hump of legitimacy and we're now into a bona fide new wave of social protest. At this point, the movement has already succeeded, purely in its capacity to incite a new potential into political discourse. It is fair to categorize the #Occupy movement as a form of 'political disobedience', as distinct from 'civl disobedience' insofar as it is purely concerned about the deadlock of politics, after politics, with creating the space for a new possibility of politics. The #Occupy movement is a form of agonistic democracy a la Laclau and Mouffe in On Populist Reason, and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. What is crucial for the movement to maintain its vibrancy is that it continue to keep the demand closed, or if you like, to keep the crisis exposed. The crisis of the system is the problem, and the idea of any modicum of policymakers creating reform is not sufficient. The idea of #Occupy when thought as a visual metaphor is perhaps best envisioned as a collection of struggles that are gathered under a single umbrella. The wider and more able to cover the space of struggles, contradictions, and inadequiecies that politics has provided in recent times, the more potent the power of the movement will gain. In other words, if #Occupy does not open space for the Tea Party, Ron Paul'ies, alter-globalization activists, greenies, identity politics, anarchists, etc, then it will fail. No one struggle can define this movement, especially not entrenched institutional interests such as organized labor or MoveOn.org. From the standpoint of strategy, the #Occupy movement has expanded on the idea of following power to various summits and protesting physical space (IMF, World Bank, Seattle in 99′ etc) and has sought to directly occup

From Protest to Disruption Frances Fox Piven Frances Fox Piven has spent decades writing about and participating in social movements in the United States. She was gracious enough to sit down for an interview with Chris Maisano, a writer and activist in the New York local of Democratic Socialists of America, where this interview first appeared. They discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests, the complex interplay between social movements and electoral politics, and the future of the occupation movement. Chris Maisano [CM]: What have you thought of the Occupy Wall Street protests so far? Frances Fox Piven [FFP]: I think they've been pretty terrific. And I really am hopeful that it's the beginning of a new period of social protest in this country. I think a lot about the protest is absolutely on target, it's so smart. It was so smart to pick Wall Street because Wall Street looms so large not only in the reality of inequality and recession policy, but it looms so large in the minds of people now because everybody knows that they're stealing the country blind. So they picked the right place, they had somehow - I don't know how self-consciously, maybe self-consciously - absorbed a kind of lesson from Tahrir Square of staying there, because usually we have demonstrations and marches and parades and things, and they're over in a nanosecond. And all that the authorities have to do is wait, because they're gonna be over. So what they tried to do is take this classical form of the mass rally - they didn't do it alone, obviously it happened in Egypt too - and connected it with the disruptive potential of mass action because they said 'we're staying.' And 'we're staying' is more troublesome. Not only that, 'we're staying' makes it possible for them to organize and mobilize throughout the course of the action, which is what they do. So that part of it was pretty, pretty smart. Frances Fox Piven interveiwed by Democracy Now! (October 4, 2011). They are sm

Welcome to the Oakland General Strike (Wednesday, November 2)   [NOTE: This invitation was addressed primarily to friends and contacts in the San Francisco Bay Area (approx. 1000 people and groups), but I also sent it to some 3000 other friends and contacts across the country and around the world, as well as posting it at this website, because I believe that many other people will be interested in hearing about what has been going on here. -KK]   Dear Bay Area Friends, As most of you probably know, the police raid and destruction of the Occupy Oakland encampments last Tuesday, followed by the notorious police violence against protesters later the same day, provoked such an immense expression of outrage from thousands of people in the Bay Area and around the world that the Oakland city government was thrown completely on the defensive. The next day police were scarcely to be seen. The fence surrounding Frank Ogawa Plaza was still in place, but the occupiers calmly took it down and began reoccupying the same spot. That evening, by a vote of 1484 to 46 (with 77 abstentions), the general assembly decided to call for a General Strike in Oakland on Wednesday, November 2. You can see their declaration, a press conference, and other information at www.occupyoakland.org. [Note that that website is continually updated. To find the posts relevant to this text, you will need to scroll back to the entries for the period leading up to November 2. Numerous videos from the day of the strike can be found here.] The fact that they reoccupied the encampment less than 48 hours after it had been demolished is astonishing enough. But that they immediately shifted to the offensive with such a marvelously audacious venture leaves me almost speechless with admiration. I hope that their appeal meets with correspondingly large-minded and supportive responses by people in Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area. Occupiers in many other cities have already been venturing outside their

Yesterday in Oakland This seven-minute video gives a pretty good brief impression of what happened in Oakland yesterday, following the police destruction of the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Among other things, I call your attention to a poignant interaction around 4:45 where a few marchers start pushing a dumpster, as if to start a barricade. A guy hugs one of them and pleads with them, "Oh, no, guys, come on, let's be civil." One of the others says, "Are they [the police] being fuckin' civil?!" Hugging that second guy, he says, "I know, brother, they're savages, they're fuckin' savages. But don't be like them! Don't be like them!" If you think that rhetoric is excessive, note the very end of the video, where lots of people are running away and one of them is hit by a tear gas canister and falls to the ground. Several of the others run back to help him, and as they are all crowding around, the police throw a flash-bang grenade right down into the group which explodes in the injured man's face. Here is a clearer view of the same incident. The young man, Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran, has a fractured skull and is in critical condition. But I guess this sort of thing has to be done in order to maintain "public peace" and keep the Plaza nice and "hygienic" . . . I was at the 4:00 rally outside the Oakland Public Library. It began with a report on the situation of the arrestees. We learned that there are 105 of them, and that two of them have broken hands and another one is in the hospital. Then there was an open mic for an hour or so, then a march. (The rally and the march ranged between 1000 and 2000 people, with many coming and going at various times.) We intended to pass by the jail where our friends were being held, but were blocked by police. In the process of pushing and shoving, the police grabbed two of us, threw them down and handcuffed them. Hundreds of us crowded around them, shouting: "Shame! S

Rights to nature: ecological, economic, cultural, and political principles of institutions for the environment Susan Hanna, Carl Folke, Karl-Göran Mäler, Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics 0 ResenhasIsland Press, 1996 - 298 páginasProperty rights are a tool humans use in regulating their use of natural resources. Understanding how rights to resources are assigned and how they are controlled is critical to designing and implementing effective strategies for environmental management and conservation.Rights to Nature is a nontechnical, interdisciplinary introduction to the systems of rights, rules, and responsibilities that guide and control human use of the environment. Following a brief overview of the relationship between property rights and the natural environment, chapters consider: ecological systems and how they function the effects of culture, values, and social organization on the use of natural resources the design and development of property rights regimes and the costs of their operation cultural factors that affect the design and implementation of property rights systems coordination across geographic and jurisdictional boundaries The book provides a valuable synthesis of information on how property rights develop, why they develop in certain ways, and the ways in which they function. Representing a unique integration of natural and social science, it addresses the full range of ecological, economic, cultural, and political factors that affect natural resource management and use, and provides valuable insight into the role of property rights regimes in establishing societies that are equitable, efficient, and sustainable.« Menos

The Situationists and the Occupation Movements (1968/2011)   One of the most notable characteristics of the "Occupy" movement is that it is just what it claims to be: leaderless and antihierarchical. Certain people have of course played significant roles in laying the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations, and others may have ended up playing significant roles in dealing with various tasks in committees or in coming up with ideas that are good enough to be adopted by the assemblies. But as far as I can tell, none of these people have claimed that such slightly disproportionate contributions mean that they should have any greater say than anyone else. Certain famous people have rallied to the movement and some of them have been invited to speak to the assemblies, but they have generally been quite aware that the participants are in charge and that nobody is telling them what to do. This puts the media in an awkward and unaccustomed position. They are used to relating with leaders. Since they have not been able to find any, they are forced to look a little deeper, to investigate for themselves and see if they can discover who or what may be behind all this. Since the initial concept and publicity for Occupy Wall Street came from the Canadian group and magazine Adbusters, the following passage from an interview with Adbusters editor and co-founder Kalle Lasn (Salon.com, October 4) has been widely noticed: We are not just inspired by what happened in the Arab Spring recently, we are students of the Situationist movement. Those are the people who gave birth to what many people think was the first global revolution back in 1968 when some uprisings in Paris suddenly inspired uprisings all over the world. All of a sudden universities and cities were exploding. This was done by a small group of people, the Situationists, who were like the philosophical backbone of the movement. One of the key guys was Guy Debord, who wrote The Society of the Sp

Two positive visions of the OWS: Wolfe and Knabb, or the spectres of Debord POSTED BY SKEPOET ⋅ NOVEMBER 9, 2011 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT So while I critiqued the Goals and Visions, urm, "visions."  I will show two accounts about the positive end of things: Ken Knabb's The Situationists and the Occupation Movements (1968/2011): One of the most notable characteristics of the "Occupy" movement is that it is just what it claims to be: leaderless and antihierarchical. Certain people have of course played significant roles in laying the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations, and others may have ended up playing significant roles in dealing with various tasks in committees or in coming up with ideas that are good enough to be adopted by the assemblies. But as far as I can tell, none of these people have claimed that such slightly disproportionate contributions mean that they should have any greater say than anyone else. Certain famous people have rallied to the movement and some of them have been invited to speak to the assemblies, but they have generally been quite aware that the participants are in charge and that nobody is telling them what to do. This puts the media in an awkward and unaccustomed position. They are used to relating with leaders. Since they have not been able to find any, they are forced to look a little deeper, to investigate for themselves and see if they can discover who or what may be behind all this. Since the initial concept and publicity for Occupy Wall Street came from the Canadian group and magazine Adbusters, the following passage from an interview with Adbusters editor and co-founder Kalle Lasn(Salon.com, October 4) has been widely noticed: We are not just inspired by what happened in the Arab Spring recently, we are students of the Situationist movement. Those are the people who gave birth to what many people think was the first global revolution back in 1968 when some uprisings in Paris suddenly inspire

Transcript: Slavoj Zizek at St. Mark's Bookshop BY SARAHANA » Fake leftist melancholia; obscene Zionist pact. Slavoj Zizek at St. Mark's Bookshop First part of the talk is a theoritical discussion on melancholy, mourning and prohibition, addressing Judith Butler and Freud. It's followed by a discussion on Wall Streets protests, including (1) a dissection of Anne Applebaum's recent column in the Washington Post that claims democracy is incompatible with globalization, but also that the Occupy protests (which react to the consequences of globalized economy) are incompatible with democracy (2) the idea of a fake leftist melancholia as it applies to these protests (3) the need to preserve the vacuum the protests create, by refusing to engage in a dialogue with those in power, just yet. Later parts of the unscripted talk discuss the obscene pact of Zionism that allows pro-Zionism and anti-Semitism to co-exist in the same group (like American Christian fundamentalists). Towards the very end, there's a brief mention of the anticipated pact between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood. October 26, 2011 at St. Mark's Bookshop. -- TRANSCRIPT -- I will simply begin by certain historical observations. You probably notice how some people, and I think precisely the wrong people, started to celebrate the Wall Street events as a new form of social carnival: so nice, we have there this horizontal organization, no terror, we are free, egalitarian, everybody can say whatever he or she wants, and so on, all that stuff. It is as if some kind of a carnivalesque collective experience is returning. And this tendency, much more than here, is alive, as you can expect, on the West Coast. A couple of days ago at Stanford they told me that - the other Sunday, about 9 days ago - that in the center of San Francisco, a guy speaking on behalf of those who occupy, said something like, "They are asking you what's your program. They don't get it. We don't have a program. W

Which way for the ecology movement? Murray Bookchin 0 Resenhas AK Press, 1994 - 75 páginas In the essays that make up this book, Murray Bookchin calls for a critical social standpoint that transcends both "biocentrism" and "ecocentrism." A call for new politics and ethics of complementarity, in which people, fighting for a free, nonhierarchical, and cooperative society, begin to play a creative role in natural evolution. Bookchin attacks the misanthropic notion that the environmental crisis is caused mainly by overpopulation or humanity's genetic makeup.
He resolutely points to social causes--patriarchy, racism, and a capitalistic "grow or die" economy--as some of the problems the environmental movement must deal with. These ideas have to be confronted by environmentally concerned readers if the ecology movement is not to destroy its own potential as a force for social change and the achievement of a truly ecological society.
Murray Bookchin's writings have profoundly influenced ecological thinking over the last forty years. Now in his 80s, he has been a life-long radical, a trade union activist in the 30s and 40s, an innovative theorist in the 60s, and a leading participant in the anti-nuclear and radical wing of the Greens in the 70s and 80s. His ideas on social ecology have been important contributions to left libertarian thinking.

Occupy Wall Street: Beyond the Rhetoric Matthew Flisfeder One of the distinguishing features of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is its apparent lack of central leadership. Not only does the movement seem leaderless; it does not appear to be organized around any clearly defined 'demands.' This has been perceived as something quite positive for participants and supporters of the movement, while being the primary point of criticism from opponents, particularly the mainstream media. Clearly, OWS stands against the unfair balance of wealth distribution in the United States (and around the world, for that matter), the unfair neoliberal politics that have swept the globe over the last four decades, corporate greed (especially in the financial sector), and various forms of systemic violence resulting from structural inequalities built into the capitalist system of exploitation. But what media pundits are looking for is something that they can represent: something, that is, with a timeline, that defines when the protestors will be 'satisfied.' This makes OWS qualitatively different from the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings that took the world stage last winter, popularly touted as the 'Arab Spring.' These groups had clearly defined 'demands': first and foremost was the overthrow of their political leaders. OWS is distinguished from the Arab Spring to the extent that its definitive aims and goals have yet to be defined. Activists meet October 7th in Toronto, in a pre-October 15 General Assembly. The movement has gone beyond the various '-isms,' labels that media pundits and the corporate elite find easy to dismiss: 'communism,' 'socialism,' 'anarchism,' 'Leftism,' etc. Commentators outside the United States have started to take notice. CBC business personality, Kevin O'Leary made a mockery of himself last week during a live interview with the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Chris Hedges, by referring to him as a "Left-wi

"If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible."- Judith Butler at Occupy Wall Street video By Kishani Widyaratna / 24 October 2011 Judith Butler, author of Frames of War and Precarious Life, visited Occupy Wall Street to lend her support to the protesters there. In a rallying speech, amplified through the human microphone, she gave her thoughts on the reception of the movement and its demands. I came here to lend my support to you today, to offer my solidarity, for this unprecedented display of democracy and popular will. People have asked, 'So what are the demands? What are the demands all these people are making?' Either they say there are no demands and that leaves your critics confused-or they say that the demands for social equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And impossible demands, they say, are just not practical. If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible. If the right to shelter, food and employment are impossible demands, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed then yes, we demand the impossible. But it is true that there are no demands that you can submit to arbitration here because we are not just demanding economic justice and social equality, we are assembling in public, we are coming together as bodies in alliance, in the street and in the square. We're standing here together making democracy, enacting the phrase 'We the people!'   A video of Butler delivering her speech at Occupy Wall Street is available below. More in #Occupy Share