The Occupy Sandy website, http://occupysandy.net, has been revamped to help us all better engage in mutual aid with the survivors of the SuperStorm.

In whatever manner you have taken part, it’s important to recognize and remember that the crisis isn't over. Not by a long shot.

Areas hit by Sandy still need volunteers. Please join us.

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Occupy in the News

The Revolution Will Be Augmented: OWS Should Embrace Google Glass

Silicon Angle

Already Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and other protesters have visited the idea of activism and citizen journalism on the front lines of large scale protests by using smartphones and live streaming–but it’s nothing compared to the surveillance capabilities of law enforcement agencies. (ht OWS News Coverage blast: subscribe here).

Free Health Care & Spirited Activism Transform NYC Public Spaces Saturday

Washington Square Public Blog

Occupy Town Square, Strike Debt, and other Occupy Wall Street groups, gathered together Saturday, March 23rd for “Medical Emergency: Life or Debt” with Washington Square Park as the hub.

Cyprus: What Every Occupier Needs to Know

OccupyWallStreet.net

Nicholas Levis from the Alternative Banking Working Group weighs in on the crisis in Cyprus after they rejected a proposed 10 billion European Union bank bailout. Cyprus constitutes “an experiment in total exercise of class power, to see how far a people can be pushed and what might be learned for future cases.”

Mortgage Protesters Occupy Bank in Barcelona

NBC News Photoblog

Members of Mortgage Victims' Platform (PAH), occupy a bank branch during a protest to support neighbors who are facing evictions processes in Barcelona, Spain, on March 19.

Let Me Ascertain You: The Civilians Podcast

By the Civilians

Let Me Ascertain You, from award-winning investigative theater company The Civilians, is a weekly podcast series of performances crafted from interviews with real people about current and controversial topics, including Occupy Wall Street, Atlantic Yards, the adult entertainment industry, Evangelical Christianity, and more. Last week they aired their finale from a 5 part Occupy #S17 series.

Occupy Wall Street and Strike Debt Stand in Solidarity With the Community of East Flatbush and the Family of Kimani Gray

OccupyWallSt.org

“Predatory debt, public austerity, emergency restructuring, climate crisis: the disasters of Wall Street hit black and brown people the hardest”. Prior to a solidarity march this Sunday, the following was published - providing details on the rationale of so many occupiers who are supporting the #BrooklynProtest, in a manner that will help provide mutual understanding for solidarity with this neighborhood-led local effort.

Featured Occu-Project of the Week

For over a year now, Occu-Evolve has been holding weekly assemblies and actions focused on "race, class, gender, identity, cultural and structural and direction of the movement.” It was formed out of an ardent commitment to providing outreach to the 99%, particularly people of color, the working class and neighborhood assemblies.

Occu-Evolve’s efforts at this time couldn’t be more timely in light of the tragedy of Kimani Gray and the #BrooklynProtest it has inspired. Check out their Occupy For Kimani (and all victims of police injustice) page for details on “positive, clear, organized and coordinated actions, communication and planning for Justice for Kimani Gray, as well as other victims of unjust and deadly police actions and encounters.”

Continue reading »

The District of Columbia is the nation’s Capital and therefore a lightning rod for national organizing, but it is also the home of 600,000 people who deal day-to-day with the consequences of many of the important issues that get protested downtown. Often, there is a great divide in DC between locally and nationally focused groups even though these groups encounter the same difficulties, require many of the same resources and often have similar goals. This leads to competing for attention, attendees, media and support while wasting that most valuable of resources, time, by duplicating efforts. Often times there are class and race divides between local and national organizers, adding to the power dynamics and complicated relationships.

Thus begins the Washington Peace Center’s Principles for Organizing in DC, a set of guidelines constructed by DC activists in response to decades of frustration with missed opportunities and unintended consequences of poor communication with national action organizers.

The guide came from a workshop at the 2010 US Social Forum titled “DC’s Not Your Protest Playground” – a reference to the common misperception that DC is little more than the seat of federal government. This concept of DC is especially painful when it comes from allies, as it is the underlying logic that excuses DC’s status as the federal-tax-paying seat of federal government – whose 600,000 residents have no voting representation in that government.

“The colony of the District is a microcosm of a lot of the injustices that face the nation,” says long-time organizer and trainer Nadine Bloch, “and when people come here without acknowledging that, there is an underlying reinforcement of the problems that exist.”

The call to get buy-in from local organizers – a principle that applies in DC or in any other city – is not only a call for respect, but for efficiency and mutual aid. Like guerrilla fighters know their own terrain, DC organizers know their city – how to get permits quickly, how to negotiate the dozens of different types of police forces, and the politics of getting turnout from relevant groups.

“Why would you import all these people [from around the country],” says Robby Diesu, who often helps organize national actions in DC, “when there are five million people who live in the DC area? It’s Organizing 101 – if you don’t get buy-in, nobody’s going to help you.”

In turn, both local and national groups often miss out on providing each other crucial support.

Successful examples of mutually beneficial cooperation are hard to find, but they can make a difference. People who traveled to Occupy Chicago’s NATO protests might remember being recruited to march on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house to support a local campaign against his closure of mental health clinics, calling national, if brief, attention to the issue. Sonia Silbert, who helped write the Peace Center’s Principles, recalls watching Medea Benjamin get a crowd of mostly out-of-towners to call DC’s mayor and tell him not to give Lockheed Martin tax breaks to move to the city.

“We shouldn’t be anybody’s token,” says Basav Sen, a DC-based activist who helped organize large anti-globalization actions until he began to feel they were taking away from building a grassroots movement with staying power, and excluding the many people who can’t come to them, “people that should be your closest allies.”

“To be involved in the local struggles and in the global struggles, and to see them as part of the same struggle,” he says, “that’s vital.”

[Via OccupyWallSt.]

A photo from what’s left of the Breezy Point neighborhood in Queens. Via the official FDNY Flickr account.

Occupy Wall Street & 350.org have teamed up with Recovers.org – a people-powered disaster relief platform – to help coordinate response to Hurricane Sandy in NYC. At Recovers.org we are launching support pages where people can GIVE help or post a NEED. For ongoing updates and info about this evolving relief effort, and to find out how you can help, be sure to sign up and stay informed at the Occupy Sandy Hub!

http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

Support Pages

https://lowereastside.recovers.org/ – (646) 580-7473
https://astoria.recovers.org/ – (347) 669-4394
https://redhook.recovers.org – (347) 770-1528

Information via OccupyWallSt,org