Click here to read. On the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Social Text is pleased to debut "Is This What Democracy Looks Like?" a collection of original essays on horizontalism in theory and practice. >>
In Dispatches from an Occupation
From the community
A friend of Occupy recently passed away: Michael Nash, head of the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU. I had only a passing personal acquaintance with Michael, but this is not untypical of the ways we Occupiers interact, and our group thought we should visit his wonderful family at shiva. Michael was a very generous man, and at least one facet of Occupy, the People's Think Tank, would not have existed without his support - which was why, despite our only passing acquaintance, I knew Michael was a generous man. If Occupy is the actions we perform, and if the institutions we build are the enablers of those actions, then our continuing action not have happened... >>
detail of massive ferry, while still in Piraeus portAll but two of the dozens of flat-screen TVs on the many upper decks of the giant ferry E. Venizelos (now en route from Piraeus to Chania) were tuned to the faceoff of the Eurocup football match between Greece and Germany. The three of us, including Nikos, had taken refuge on Deck 8 in seats several yards away from those last two hold-out TVs, thinking ourselves remote if not safe from a few hours of nationalist uproar. Nikos said, with a smile, that it might be better for the Greeks if the Greek team lost--as was expected-- so long as it wasn't totally thrashed. Either way we were pleased to be insulated... >>
From the community
When it was my turn to speak, the only words on offer were something like "I really don't like to think of myself as an activist. I kind of want to think of myself as a normal person. I don't think that most of what I believe is all that radical, and I don't know why other people think of it that way." Surprisingly, this met with more consensus than would have seemed likely. >>
The Occupy Movement has revived May Day. For far too many years, this holiday, which was of course also a solidarity-building occasion, has been ignored by the US labor movement. Ironic, given the fact that May Day actually began in the US. >>
Periscope
Work and Idleness in the Age of the Great Recession
This special issue of Periscope on “Work and Idleness in the Age of the Great Recession,” reconsiders our sense of what qualifies as work or idleness when there is little or no work to be had. The role idleness might play in our lives, and in our collective imaginaries, may strike some as unthinkable or even irresponsible when so much suffering and uncertainty has been triggered by high unemployment rates. Yet perhaps now more than ever we have arrived at a moment that necessitates a critical rethinking of the normative institutions of work—in the form of employment or occupation, amongst others—under capitalism, especially during this time when “Right to Work” legislation, notions of a “jobless recovery,” and austerity measures have been proposed and implemented as the means of resolving various crises, both social and economic, in the U.S. and other parts of the globe. >>
