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In the fall of 2011, a small protest camp in downtown Manhattan exploded into a global uprising, sparked in part by the violent overreactions of the police. An unofficial record of this movement, Occupy! combines adrenalin-fueled first-hand accounts of the early days and weeks of Occupy Wall Street with contentious debates and thoughtful reflections, featuring the editors and writers of the celebrated n+1, as well as some of the world’s leading radical thinkers, such as Slavoj Žižek, Angela Davis, and Rebecca Solnit.
The book conveys the intense excitement of those present at the birth of a counterculture, while providing the movement with a serious platform for debating goals, demands, and tactics. Articles address the history of the “horizontalist” structure at OWS; how to keep a live-in going when there is a giant mountain of laundry building up; how very rich the very rich have become; the messages and meaning of the “We are the 99%” tumblr website; occupations in Oakland, Boston, Atlanta, and elsewhere; what happens next; and much more.
Reviews
“Occupy! abounds with insights on how the occupiers have dealt with internal challenges to their experiment in direct democracy.”
“Both analytical and full of vivid experience... These blog-style pieces are interspersed with more substantive writings, which are the true strength of the collection... but most interesting are those by lesser-known writers who bring us vivid historical analyses of various aspects of the occupations.”
“Unlike most quickie publications, the book is gorgeous, a testament to beautiful book design...the essays are thoughtful pieces of first-person reportage. [A] clear-eyed and sober examination of the dream world that we created this fall, along with a few brief, tentative explorations of what it will become in the future. It's also an excellent proof-of-concept for speedily published book-length journalism that does work blogs and newspapers simply can't do. This is not some dashed-off smear of a money-making scheme; I recommend it heartily.”
“A heart warming anthology of the voices involved in this surprising grass roots movement.”
“Occupy!, an anthology from the occasional Occupy Gazette published by n+1, includes…a lovely piece on the difficulties of organising an occupation’s laundry, which works as a handy metaphor for some of the movement’s larger challenges.”
Verso recommends
