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  • Introduction
  • Jodi Dean (bio), James Martel, and Davide Panagia

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Photo by Accra Shepp. Copyright © 2011 Accra Shepp.

As we go to press, the Occupy Wall Street movement is in its third month. Inspired in part by the Arab Spring and the acampadas in Madrid and Barcelona, the occupation movement has reinvigorated left politics in the US and spread to more than a thousand cities worldwide. In the place of hopelessness and stagnation, there is an open sense of possibility. Now, as a vivid and undeniable feature of our political setting, outrage over inequality, unemployment, debt, and the political power of money and corporations has a form for its expression. Occupation is that form.

Several weeks ago, we invited political and media theorists to reflect on the event of Occupy Wall Street. Given our intermediated setting as well as the open, horizontal, and practically viral nature of the movement, these reflections aren't outside the event. Rather, they are part of it, pushing its momentum and understanding in some directions rather than others. Some of the contributions began their lives as blog posts. Some are interventions aiming to influence and advise. Some draw out the global dimensions of the movement. Some attend to the affective and sensory modes of being occupation enables. One was initially delivered as a speech in Zuccotti Park. Together the pieces collected for this supplement to 14.4 produce a theorization of a movement that is just beginning and that in this movement of beginning insists on, claims, and asserts, perhaps more than anything else, the freedom to configure its own space of action.

Although any account of the origins and growth of the movement will exclude moments crucial for shaping the event that it has and will continue to become, we offer a rough timeline as an incitement for future research.

Instigation

July 13, 2011 Adbusters (a Canadian magazine that advocates culture-jamming as a weapon of struggle against corporate control), issues a call on its blog for people to flood lower Manhattan, bring tents, and occupy Wall Street. With an image of a ballerina balancing on top of the famous Wall Street bull, the call starts to circulate on the internet.1
August 2 The first General Assembly (GA) comes together for a meeting at the bull. About a week earlier, New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, an activist group that had occupied sidewalks outside City Hall for three weeks in June to protest upcoming austerity measures in the city budget (thirteen people were arrested), had called for a People's Assembly opposing cuts of any kind. They chose August 2 because of the looming "debt ceiling," debate which had stalemated Washington.2 Rather than an actual assembly, however, the gathering was structured more like a rally. Artists and anarchists who had been discussing the September 17th occupation at the art collective 16 Beaver left the rally for conversations of their own in which they began putting a plan together in earnest.3 The group will meet, grow, adopt its horizontal, consensus-based practices, and form working groups over the next six weeks that will scout out a location (Zuccotti Park, because of its strange legal status as a privately owned public space), test the law regarding sleeping on the sidewalks, and conduct training sessions in civil disobedience.
August 23 Anonymous posts a video announcing the occupation of Wall Street on the internet, drawing attention to the event and linking the hackers to the movement. The Guy Fawkes mask associated with Anonymous (because of its powerful association with resistance and revolution in the 2006 film, V for Vendetta) will become prominent in images of the occupations, marches, and demonstrations.4

Becoming Present

September 17 A few thousand people show up for the march on Wall Street (significantly less than the 20,000 expected). Some do yoga in the streets. Over 500 stay for the GA. Since the police won't allow them to use microphones, they use the "People's Mic," where people loudly repeat the speaker's words so the rest of the crowd can hear them. AnonOps Communications and Global Revolution run live feeds from the occupation...

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