Occupy the World together
"Occupy the World Together" is the title of a Facebook page, of the website of a Canadian trade union, of a demonstration of the Occupy Budapest, of many videos on YouTube ... and of 12,000 other results on Google.
"We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent." ( Opening text of the website "We are 99%", dedicated to thousands of short glimpses of life posted by anonymous members of the Occupy Wall Street movement ).
"The only solution is World Revolution" (End of statement on the homepage of the Occupy Wall Street website).
"Workers will win if they'll understand that no one is to come. For a marxist the expectation of a Messiah and the cult of the genius, explainable for Peter and Carlyle, are only a miserable covering of helplessness. The Revolution will rise up terrible, but anonymous" (PCInt., 1953)
Occupy Liberty Square
Our movement is widening, the experience of Zuccotti Park, namely Liberty Square, is going to be very useful to us. The square was and remains a reference point. No dirt and drugs at all. The hygiene issue is only a pretext, of course. Before the cops had put us out, there was a great collaboration here between the occupiers, the square was being kept very clean, there was a computer center well equipped, with current generators and routers wireless, a kitchen producing hundreds of meals every day, a library. We were there when they threw everything inside the garbage trucks. Heeled as we were by the riot police we couldn't do anything. The books were already five thousands, the tent with the bookshelves was a present from Patty Smith. Here the movement was even collecting money, it is always a good sign in this country. In the offer box we found 150.000 $ in a month. The donations on the bank account exceeded a half million dollars.
At night the square was guarded. We were two or three hundred people with tents. During the day we did assemblies, some shows, a lot of counterinformation. It is natural for a movement to try having a place that can also be a point of reference. Also the Greeks had looked for it and then achieving it in Syntagma Square, the Egyptians did the same in Tahrir Square and the Spanish in Puerta del Sol square. At the beginning we were influenced by other movements, but New York is quite a special city and soon its underground, anarchist, liberal background emerged. Kalle Lasn says that the movement looks a little bit like the '68 european one, that it has some situationist features. Kalle has founded the magazine Adbusters. He was among the promoters of Occupy Wall Street. To us, he is totally wrong. Here, almost no one knows what a situationist is. Not to mention a communist. There was a lot of ideology in the European movement, while the soup served at the Zuccotti Park fast food is made with an American pragmatist broth. There is no recipe and each day it is improvised. Moreover the cook is a nomad, one day he's in Cairo, one day in Athens, one day in Oakland.
Seriously. What is expressed by the placards and on our official website is not only pragmatic naïvety. On average we do believe in the motto "we start setting the agenda for a new America". It is our obsession. Even the fascist neocons were convinced of being the forerunners of the new American century. Luckily they disappeared. God bless America, we won't disappear. Look at the poster: a nimble dancer on the rump of the massive Wall Street's charging bull. Lightness against heaviness. It may be a urban legend, but someone says that there was the hacktivist group Anonymous behind the idea of the "Manhattan invasion" and of occupying Wall Street. In fact, the group invited all his militants to support the movement furnishing technical information. Some news become memes that expand and evolve. Anonymous has promised to attack the computer system of Wall Street, of the criminal banks and of the police. Nothing happened (the stock was blocked for a couple of minutes), but media really go crazy with news like that. The truth is that there is no need to be geek to set up a computer task force. We are as light as bits and through the immaterial Web an organized network have raised. We are new, therefore revolutionary. On the contrary the opponent is old, elephantine, destined to die.
Our motto is: "We are the 99%." Nobody knows when it was born. Probably in 2010, when DeGraw's book The Economic Elite against the American people was issued. It caught on at once. It's a half statistic truth. It's true that as a percentage on the population we are so numerous, but our most successful mobilization in New York, in two months of being, took to the streets at most 40,000 people. This is not big for an eleven million inhabitants city. However, the biggest result is the spread around the world. It's a wave we didn't create, it was formed of itself starting from the Arab movement. We are a product of this tsunami and it would be good for our enemies to bear this in mind. On October the 15th, a month after our formation, the mobilization called about ten millions people to fill squares in one thousand cities through 80 countries. Our website now has 2,600 communities around the world with 21,000 members. In two months that's not bad.
We Americans like numbers. You go on top of any touristic skyscraper, they give you a leaflet telling you the number of the years it took to build it, the weight of the steel, the length of the cables, the speed of the lifts, the total employees. According to Pareto's empirical law, the 80% of wealth should be held by 20% of Americans, but this 20% actually owns the 87,7%. We are capable of doing better than what laws of capitalism can do. By the way. Some say we are anti-capitalist, therefore socialist or even (how horrible!) communists. And also, of course, young, lazy and maybe even drug abusers. No worries: sociologists and statisticians (in a larger number than journalists) have already come to pick holes in. Well: the two-thirds are under 35 years, the others are older. Poor elderly are many: at Zuccotti Park they can grab some meals. As we know, ours is no country for old men. The 27% declares voting for the Democrats, the 3% for the Republicans. The 70% do not care at all, either they don't vote or they vote randomly. Nobody has declared being anarchist, socialist or communist. The half of those people have a steady job, the others either do not have any job or are precarious. You know what it means here. And now pay attention to these two figures: only the 6% claims that inequality of incomes is the most frustrating thing. Only the 4% says that they would like a policy of income equalization if the movement took office. That means that the problem is not a few more dollars, the problem is that we live a shitty life.
The New York City General Assembly (NYCGA) which takes place every evening at seven is the place where decisions are taken. The meeting is public. There is no formal leadership and we don't want it. Those who participate the more contribute more in the decision-making. There's a bit of confusion, but it works. We don't have other program for making claims than to occupy New York City on a permanent basis. Someone made proposals but without any result. Sooner or later a program will be specified, that's for sure. From a logistical standpoint, now that they turned us away from Zuccotti Park we will see what to do. Meanwhile, Zuccotti is still a point of reference. We could occupy buildings, but it does not matter at the present moment.
There is the problem of centralization. The movement has gone far beyond the boundaries of one country and even of one continent. Wall-street is a street-symbol of New York and rightly many Occupy-other-cities are springing, as for example Occupy Oakland, Los Angeles, Denver, Portland, Florence, Paris, London, Berlin, Melbourne, Toronto, and so on. The Network is the tool centralizing the work, even if local realities develop more or less independently. The mobilization of October 15th has shown that nodes develop spontaneously, and they connect between themselves as well as with national hubs, and all together in turn draw and transmit information from/to the New York hub, so that the centralism is never lost and the coordination takes place entirely by default. Therefore, the debate about authority makes no sense anymore. It's just born and it's already dead.
We have a structure already known by other structures. Many workers are involved in the movement. It was inevitable that the unions in crisis came to find a contact with us. The first were those of nurses and transports. Then came those of the local public sector and the IWW. At the October-the-4th event in New York there were thousands of workers. The representatives of 14 of the largest Unions in the United States marched with us. We do not believe that collaboration between the movement Occupy Wall Street and trade unions can be harmful as somebody says. It is true that we are not a political movement in the classic sense. We are not a party, even if we are biased. We are not even a trade union movement. It's also true that trade unions are hierarchical organizations with a pyramidal structure, while we are organized as a network and this might cause some incompatibilities. But in our opinion it's impossible that the old structure could give us problems, while the contrary is much more likely to happen. The truth is that American labor unions were suffocating for lack of members so they found some oxygen in Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, the powerful UAW (United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Workers) said: "We recognize the need to work together and learn from each other. The vitality, the energy and the dialogue growing from the Occupy Wall Street movement show the potential to organize, build power and win justice for the middle class." Well, we Americans consider the workers as part of the middle class. Every time there was a demonstration a little bit more crowded these Unions joined the queue. Many american political organizations are trying to climb on the bandwagon of OWS, from the Ken Knabb situationists to certain rightwing americans, from unions to anarchists, etc.. We see this as a sign of strength not a weakness. They won't be able to do anything. Imagine them in one of our assemblies, with their language, with their programs, with their snooty will to hegemony.
Occupy the top
Ok, I'm a speculator. All the traders are. Retirees speculate as well with their pension funds. Let's face it: to me, it's better living in the attic than in the cellar. If losers protesting and occupying are the 99% we need to understand what is the remaining 1%. In the States we are 300 millions in all. The 1% represents 3 millions. There aren't so many masters of steam. There are many who have money, but few are those who control the money. Let me give an example. The whole world is worth more or less 60.000 billion dollars in living capital, the so-called added value. I do not put into account the dead capital, the amortization, like systems, infrastructure,etc. In front of this mass of new dollars generated every year stands the financial capital. Never mind the definition. Once there was the financial capital coming from industry and services and ending in the circuit of credit in order to be re-invested in the same sectors. Now there's a capital produced in the past which wants to reproduce itself in a circuit of its own, using the dead capital (including factories) only as a semblance of solvency. And after all being creditworthy is no longer a custom, the debt has become the norm and is subject of speculation. That's why the so-called financial capital is scary and everyone rushes to serve it, trying to avoid disasters.
Speculation existed even in the ancient times, but it was a marginal phenomenon. Nowadays the fictitious capital simply scares because it's big. Nobody knows how much. The World Bank has tried to do the calculations: it seems there'sone million of billion dollarsinvested only in derivatives. Disturbing, but that's not all: 30% of this figure represents OtC (Over the Counter) movements, which are not recorded by official institutions, out of control. Then there are the stock markets, public debts, monetary reserves, investment funds, all negotiable instruments on the market and in turn woven. For example, a fund may have in the portfolio currency, derivatives, shares and other funds. The naked and raw numbers are the best explanation of what are the true "fundamentals" of today's economy.
Three million of super-capitalists are too many, even if we exclude grandparents and grandchildren. Those who want to occupy Wall Street have taken the wrong objective. Skirmishes between one thousand of young losers and a few hundred cops (losers as well) are definitely not relevant for those who control even a part of millions of billions of dollars. There is a fundamental mistake, which is typical for losers: thinking that their personal situation is somebody's "fault". The fault of some oligarchy secretly plotting. The Spectre only exists in Fleming's novels. The reality is made of capital's employees. We are well paid, we are on the top floors of skyscrapers and we do an anonymous chore. We put data into a computer system and we let algorithms found by some other employee working. From the windows of our offices we cannot even distinguish what is happening in the streets. After all the great directors earning those figures we read about on the newspaper, they don't really count, they're just a waste.
So I am an employee. Of course, I earn a lot. But I also risk a lot. Mobility is high in our environment. I know people who even risk more than me by trading on their own through small companies using their own money and other people money (the border is not defined, pecunia non olet). The mass of the floating capital runs through many nodes in the operators network, but the hubs, the important nodes, rather essential, are few. Very, very few comparing with the percentages of the slogans. With the crisis they have ended up in the newspapers. They are real estate lenders, banks, pension funds, insurances. It is not about 1% of something, this is a whole system.
Those who demonstrate are losers because they do not represent a system against another system, they are only individuals with problems. They don't affect at all what they believe is their opponent, because it doesn't exist. There are placards saying "Shut down the 1%". Do they want us dead? This question is non sense. Kill the taller among poppies and nothing will happen. What is written on the mass of placards is nothing but a claim for distributive justice. However at the upper floors of skyscrapers there's no injustice, because in this country enrichment is sacred more than anywhere else. Rather there is the attempt of operating between legality and the no man's land where the law is questionable, in order to avoid too many impediments to the creation of profits. Distributive justice has only one meaning: distributing to others what you have earned. That's why America can't stand taxes and is going to raise before against the Internal Revenue than against the so-called injustice. In a free system there is already a distributive justice,there are opportunities for everyone. Darwin was right: the existence in this world is ruled by laws of nature. Do you want a proof? On their web-site a debate took place about the opportunity of actually blocking Wall Street's stock. You know why? Because at the NYSE the majors operators are the workers' pension funds. This is what I call being a loser. A friend of mine working in the field of banks' computer security says: we can live in peace, in the enemy ranks there are more messengers than shooters.
We are what they ought to be, what they could really be if they only had enough power to get what they expect others should offer them. Energy comes from the money. We do respect rules of a country which bases its dynamism on the promise that the money gives you freedom. And we work hard, we measure ourselves everyday with this promise. That is why we collect money from the system and re-enter it into the system to make more money, no matter what happens among the thousands trickles at the ends of the network. Make more money with less money, this is the simple magic formula that sums up all the abstruse languages of finance, the leverage that supports the globe. And everyone, even the losers who want to bring down Wall Street, even the poor devils who lose their jobs and go hungry or professors who hold forth in the newspapers, almost all of them agree on the nature of the system. They don't want another system, they want this system not to be itself. But this is absurd.
If you go asking around nobody will tell you, but you know it by reading the documents, the comments on the Web, the placards in the demonstrations, you can't find anyone being truly outside this system's rules. That is why we keep on doing our work totally undisturbed. They've called me a piranha, but I respect the laws, don't hurt other people, I could sometimes even do charity if I wanted. Or I could even stay away from the no man's land where the rules fade and the gain is amplified. They say our high frequency trading activity is illegal and highly speculative. It is not true for the first part and I need someone to explain to me the second, the term "speculation". Nobody being sane would place money in a system not to get more money.
Occupy the market
I have been sitting in this office for many years and I know very well the young raiders. They are young ruthless marauders, dynamic, they have intuition and determination. They get ahead in a twinkling but often they fall down and injure themselves very badly. Money is a drug and it makes them feel almighty. But they are absolutely individualistic and do not fully understand their belonging to a system. Of course they suit us as they are, but sometimes they represent a problem. For example, when they appear in the newspapers because they've lost control of the situation and they speculate on their own with the money of the company which pays them handsomely. Or when they earn enough to branch out on their own and, with the nest egg, they buy a bit of IT in order to exploit the knowledge they acquired. Which also means to use it illegally, as in the case of the insider trading [they speculate using confidential inside information from companies].
Morality has nothing to do with it. I run a hedge fund, a fund which is admittedly high-yield speculative but high-risk too. We use computer systems as well, for sophisticated strategy and to operate on different markets simultaneously, taking advantage of local time 24 hours a day. We too don't despise confidential information. However we try to operate within a system that we presume to control, even if within the limits of its physiological fluctuations. Moreover, it's known that fluctuations are our daily bread. The fact is that the system went out of control and it is very much due to the automatism that everyone uses nowadays. It seems like if the enormous mass of existing financial capital had taken operators' hand forcing them to conform its rhythm. The mechanism is perverse: sensors are distributed throughout the system and, according to the received information, operative answers are given, sell or buy, with or without leverage effect, shares, oil, bonds, currencies, wheat. Everything. The human operator cannot react that fast, so machines and their software are in charge of everything. Well, almost everything.
The word "almost" is of high importance. The automatism is like a cancer in the system. Once introduced by the first operator, it spreads as a metastasis because the competition forces everyone to upgrade. And since our brain doesn't react to the complexity of the markets in a microseconds like a computer does; then the computers network becomes self-referential. Soros, who runs a hedge fund by far much more powerful than ours, was the first to theorize this self-reference, calling it reflexivity. Before the spreading of the automatic procedures, it was already evident that the observer, if enough important, had an influence on the system with the simple fact of existing. All the more so, if operating, it produced the effects that others watched.
Today we have reached the extreme limits of reflexivity. Imagine someone who owns a very powerful computer system, with the appropriate software able to operate in the markets in order to enter information that others will receive, so that they'll be able to operate themselves. What it is evident is that in this way someone will influence the markets themselves, because all automatic operators will detect the information entered. I'm synthesizing. In fact, many factors contribute to the complexity of markets, rating agencies, banks, governments, the economic situation. The fact is, however, that the most powerful nodes of the network where the markets are structured, have the possibility of influencing all the others moreover taking advantages from that. This would be normal, in the financial world it has always happened. But today very few nodes can influence vast masses of capitals, so as to bring down even the most powerful countries. I'm not saying that there is a conspiracy of few against many: it happens, that's all.
Small brokerage houses operating with automatic high frequency systems are obviously preys for larger ones, and contribute more than all to create the daily trends. Their action is not transparent. They are connected through very personal relationships with the stock exchange environment, especially in New York and Chicago. Strangely enough, they can have very confidential information through these channels. For example, they know with a few seconds in advance what a big pension fund that moves billions of dollars will do, so they move quickly to forestall the consequences. We obviously think that there is an interest in letting them operate in that way, often in unison. They manage to intercept buy and sale flows and to anticipate price changes before everyone else. Since a dozen years now, since it is permitted to operate with electronic systems, this has become increasingly evident. And maybe that pension fund loses out, or rather the capitals collected with the deposits of thousands of workers lose out. Right, it shouldn't be the representative of a hedge fund to say that, but the fact is that we too are victims of the market automatism. Everything is out of control, we no longer know if we or the crazy capitals are in charge. And there's trouble, because the numbers involved are huge.
Occupy Wall Street people rally against a system of inequalities that has always been, but which now is starting to have lethal effects. If you look closely, even some members of the Republican Party did not have the courage to follow their colleagues in insulting the movement. But neither one nor the other know that inequality is the inevitable result of a statistic principle [Pareto's law]. Normally states took measures in order to mitigate this effect, but now, with the automatism imposed by an uncontrollable system, the consequences are taken to extremes.
After all, laws are made by those who own the capitals or those who are at their service through lobbies. Taxation on capital gains in the United States is 15%, while the one on labor income is 35%. So in percentage the PA of a millionaire pays more taxes than her/his principal. If Warren Buffett says this, and he's one of the richest men in the world, we can believe him. But these are minor things compared to the entire system. For example, we receive some funds in custody to obtain a surplus. All our customers know that a hedge fund is highly speculative, risky, so they're not surprised about his raids on markets. The same is true for investment banks. But out of the loop not everybody knows that since 1999 the commercial banks can do the same thing with the money of their regular customers. Banks have factually become the most gigantic hedge funds of the world. In other words there is no distinction between speculation and investment, now there is only speculation.
They let us, who are considered the "bad guys" of market, use a leverage of five or six times the capital we hold as a warranty. Banks can easily reach a ratio of thirty to one. This means that the bank,with one million dollars in equity invests thirty millions, twenty-nine of which are taken from the savers. The problem is that the banking system, at this point, cannot be reformed. How can you recapitalize a bank to restore the equity capital at, let's say, 15% of the movements as it once was? It's impossible. And then it would be necessary to send home most of the executives, eliminate super bonus that they have guaranteed to themselves, plan massive layoffs among the staff. Nevertheless here in America they already started doing all this, and soon they're gonna be forced to do the same in Europe. It's going be a world war, even if nobody wants it, but the capitals floating among five continents do not want to stay still. They want profit, and no street manifestation will be able to stop them.
To subscribe to our fund you need at least half a million dollars. This is a pretty penny, that can find good returns only with big movements. And movements of this significance are mainly found in the field of derivatives. That's where the speculation reaches its peak, but it's also the place where more than anywhere else people involved cannot do without changing the field itself. Derivatives are so called because their price derives from the price of a related activity. Obviously the more intricate the connections become, the less you can get control of the situation. It's already quite easy to lose the thread dealing with derivatives of physical matter, oil, copper, wheat and coffee. Just imagine when it's about currencies, changes in interest rates, stocks, debts, indexes of holdings in which all this is contained. It's a system, no one can be considered "guilty" if the price of wheat and rice increases to the point of starving people. Or if the poors' loans are put into structured financial instruments and, when the mass of insolvents crosses a critical threshold, the world economy blows up for the domino effect. No one is able to know if and when the threshold gets really critical. For this reason the Occupy Wall Street protesters miss the mark and are doomed to failure.
Occupy Oakland
On November the 2nd we gave a big shake to America. Oakland, 400,000 inhabitants, is one of the most important seaports of the United States. Here Occupy Wall Street organized a general strike for the first time since the movement begun. Or rather, thousands of people self-organized a general strike right after a general street assembly. As usual, the Web was the coordinating element. We made a website on purpose: Occupy Oakland. The strike blocked the entire city, but the most important goal for all of us was obviously the port. Thousands of protesters marching with their improvised signs involved the population, the unions queued up, pickets arose spontaneously and the movement of containers was paralyzed. Even beyond the bay, in San Francisco, out of solidarity the occupiers guarded the squares.
Here in the 60´s the protest against the Vietnam War was very strong and here is the place where the Black Panthers took root. Here the struggle of the students development has been seen from the University of Berkeley. There was also a strong workers' organization and a few years ago a strong sudden reversal took place during the Pacific coast dockers' all-out strike. Now the crisis is being felt more than elsewhere, sailors and dockers remain unemployed while the steady stream of thousands Chinese ships makes meaning of "globalization" very tangible. The scenario does not differ from the movement usual one. It identifies the places dear to the 1% (banks, corporations, government, offices): people pitch tents, bivouac, demonstrate and fiery meetings are held. Local police behavior differs a little. Since few joints pass round and there's a bit of rubbish, an huge number of agents is mobilized with the usual pretext of "drugs" and "hygiene". As it will happen in New York and elsewhere.
The attack of the police in fighting trim, delivered on the night of October the 25th, fails. Hundreds of protesters gather, the police retreats. During the clashes a young man is hit in the head by a teargas and is taken to the hospital in a coma. He's a marine, a veteran of the Iraq war. He was protesting with young unemployed. As for other occasions, repression makes the the anger to blow out. Tents are put back up, the mayor (a Chinese woman) tries to mediate, the police is withdrawn from the streets. In Oscar Grant plaza protesters gathering at the assembly ask for the general strike. A committee puts in writing a brief statement:
"We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%. We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city. All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them. While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of. The whole world is watching Oakland. Let's show them what is possible."
Some of us are perplexed. Motivation follows too blatantly generic slogans written on the signs of the movement. It does not reflect any particular claim. Anyhow, it is proved that the mass movements do not take their energy from pieces of paper and voting. Although the slogan "Strike by 99% against the 1%" sounds a bit too weak, the square responds with an incredible majority: only 47 people votes against of about 1600 being present. The appeal seems pure wishful thinking for many, but as it often happens, the effervescent climate overcome any hesitancy. The decision is taken and the date fixed. The watchword is "Shut down", to close, to lock. Anonymous occupiers begin to organize marches and pickets on the Web, to map out trails to the final meeting. Three of the marches will have the task to shut the banks. The port will be blocked at the final confluence.
The program is more or less respected. On the morning of November the 2nd all businesses, including shops, schools, public services turn to be shut. The weather is magnificent, with a beautiful sunshine. The marches look crazy. They are apparently chaotic but they ultimately take shape and move with confidence. There is everything from babies in buggies to old men, from well assigned workers to freaks with joints. Demonstrations swell as they go and they make Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan to shut. In one of the meeting points for the demonstration, an elderly lady goes on the stage. She incites to riot "this great movement on which the eyes of world are pointed". A standing ovation takes, but only few can remember Angela Davis when forty years ago she harangued the masses, far more numerous and combative. We believe that the movement we have today is not less important than the one of yesterday. Today is not about the claim of civil rights, the assertion a political movement. Something deeper is at stake, which concerns the way of being of the society, a visceral rejection of the effects of Capitalism.
Later a large picket blocks the port. At this very point the trade unions decide, they take note the strike is on going and they queue up, showing their solidarity. First the dockers' union, since the dockers are in the front row, then the school one, the health, workers of cooperatives, even a union of the local police, which dissociates from the charges of the previous days and publishes an open letter stating that policemen are part of the 99%. There is again an incredible mess around the port, people move in all directions quite excited. But coordination is not affected. Individual protesters and small groups raise handmade signs in front of the cameras. All kind of things are written on the signs. There are many references to the "Arab Spring". Gandhi is more depicted than Lenin. There is also a large banner praising the "Oakland Commune" Signs in verse, environmental, others against imprisonment, pro-joints, and for wage increases, against the rich people, for funds to schools, against the arms, against evictions. And there it dominates, great, very much used, "Capitalism, game over". Probably the most beautiful of all is "There are more reasons for the enthusiasm than for fear".
Occupy Wall Street
We are part of a great anonymous movement. We have no one sent by the Lord or the Fate. There are no Great Men who take care of us and of Humanity illuminating us on their Weltanschauung, their vision of the world. Here even philosophers have come to terms with our language. Those who want to come and visit us can have a look on the website We are the 99percent. There are more than three thousand anonymous profiles of ordinary people struggling to live a normal life. The vast majority have serious problems. Many do not have any, but they know that it takes nothing to be sent down the hell of poverty. Almost everyone is indebted, having mortgaged their lives at a bank. They are simply fed up and now just want to make it known. Anonymous people went on the Web, anonymous people took to the streets.
The 17th of November was the two months anniversary of our movement. For the occasion, during the previous days, on the website Occupy Wall Street a rough program appeared: 1) breakfast, take to the streets around the New York Exchange Standard, which means blocking the world's largest stock exchange; 2) lunch, occupy sixteen subway stations at strategic locations; 3) dinner,the final big rally in Foley Square (backup option: also occupy the bridges). It seems crazy, it is unrealistic to think that they will actually allow you to occupy Wall Street, and the subways, and the squares, and the bridges. And then: how many people it would take?
At seven in the morning, we begin to flock toward Wall Street. At eight o'clock we are a few thousand already, but not enough to block all access roads to the neighborhood. However we are able to patrol both sides despite the massive presence of police. They cordoned off the area and threatened to arrest all those surpassing the blocks. The flow of reporters called by the announced program is impressive. Well, they are so numerous that, unwittingly, they help us blocking the roads. At eight and a half the two main outputs of the nearby subway to Wall Street are closed, as well as all access roads. The police moves some contingent and arrests begin.
About nine o'clock, from some side streets we receive a help request: protesters blocking access with a sit-ins are attacked by police with long sticks. We are sufficiently numerous to move and scramble the barricades to block police vehicles. The Wall Street employees are hesitant in front of the check point. Becoming one with us and with the reporters they contribute to clog up the streets of the neighborhood. In some very narrow streets the police is overwhelmed by the crowd. A police motorcyclists' patrol is bottled right in Wall Street. Elsewhere, the agents must untrim the crossroads in order to keep the subway stations opened. The news of 30 arrested arrives, they include a disabled woman in a wheelchair. The stock market traders do not make it on time. We stopped for half an hour the bell of the transaction opening: there's a standing ovation. The next day the media will tease us for our hype about this silly thing that is worth less than nothing. It's just a symbol, we know it very well. We know that even if we could block the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] nothing would happen, physical exchanges are only an insignificant part of the total in that building. But in revolutions symbols are important.
At half past nine we receive the news on our mobile phones about a brutal police attack at 60 Wall Street, down the skyscraper of Deutsche Bank. Some sit-ins are dissolved to rush. The Occupiers are confined on the sidewalk, behind the barriers, those who move are arrested. Large groups of occupiers come from Broadway, they tell us that even there there have been series of arrests. They tell us they are now fifty, plus a dozen of reporters. At ten o'clock there seems to be an impasse, we can not figure out how many we are. In many intersections sit-ins are surrounded by police. There's a bustle of unmolested protesters in the streets around. At ten fifteen we come to know that the sanitation workers have put the truck across an important access route to Wall Street in solidarity with the occupiers, closing it. Hundreds of them, cut off from the Wall Street area, are shifted to occupy Liberty Square, which is two or three hundred meters ahead. As soon as the rumor spread, a large demonstration formed in Broadway moves ahead to reach the square, which they find surrounded by police. The besiegers are besieged and call reinforcements. Meanwhile arrests go on, and reporters trying to document it are beaten.
At eleven we clearly see that the police, although always on the attack, is in chaos, unable to control the situation. The great mobility of the protesters, partly intentional and partly not, is very effective. At eleven and a half we declare Liberty Square regained. We demolish the barriers system on the park side. Meanwhile another demonstration marching on Wall Street is formed. There are thousands of people. The police quickly restores the barriers knocked down by the demonstrators. From the buildings some employees come out and join the demonstration. Solidarity comes from Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Portland: in both cities they have blocked some bridges. We are occupying in 30 cities of the United States. Solidarity also from Athens, where 30,000 people are marching toward the centre. By noon you cannot count the cities in the world where OWS's demonstrations are held. Our team of lawyers announce that those arrested are more than two hundred. A message circulates: "Our Day of Action has just begun, stay tuned."
At half past one the police in riot gear and armed with sticks attacks at Liberty Square. It closes every access in and out. Restore the barriers and deploys several buses which were previously used to take away arrested persons. The attack more than predictable causes many wounded and many arrests. It is not allowed to doctors to intervene. At quarter past two the symbol square is again busy and the bloodstains on the pavement are photographed for documentation. The police close ranks in force around the square, the balances of power are unfavorable to us. A large number of reporters run in starting to take pictures. The occupiers mark in chorus: "go on cops, the whole world is watching you!".
At two forty the first part of the day is over. Thousands of occupiers leave Wall Street and Liberty Park going back in dribs and drabs along both sides of Broadway to the north where, a few miles away, the students on strike gathered. In order to merge the two different events several parades march to Foley Square. At four and a half there is an attempt to occupy the Fifth Avenue, but the police manages to stop it. They occupy the Sixth and Seventh street, and finally the Fifth Avenue too. The police patrol and fence the adjacent streets to prevent the spontaneous spreading of the event. Despite the blocks, thousands of protesters meet thousands of workers of the labor unions that are marching to Foley Square. At five the square is full and it yells, "Bloomberg careful, Liberty Square is everywhere!". Police deploys guards on horseback. As an answer occupiers close other avenues. In the confusion, the program to block the sixteen underground stations is off.
At a quarter past six a procession of at least 20,000 people starts from Foley Square directed to the Brooklyn Bridge. Twitter goes into fibrillation, thousands of messages cross. At seven o'clock the head of the march, about 2,000 people, arrives at the entrance station of the bridge, in front of City Hall and blocks it. At the same time comes the news that the police scanners aircraft have counted 32,650 demonstrators in Foley Square and its surroundings. We had no idea how many we were. If the police gave that number it means we were certainly more, but let's take it for granted, it'll become the official one. The crowd erupts in a roar and begins to chant: "No one can stop us, another world is possible." It's not true. They will try to stop us and they will probably be able to do so, for a while. They won't make it through the police but through ourselves. As long as our frame of mind will be tied to this world, another world is not possible. It is not a psychological problem, theoretical, political, but practical. To really want another world you must reject all categories of the current one. Until then, it will be a world for old people, regardless the age. Just take a look at the thousands pages of the interventions on the OWS website. Our movement is greater than the sum of its individual opinions.
Shortly before eight once again the big yellow banner with the inscription Occupy Wall Street, which has accompanied us for miles, is deployed. The mass of protesters crosses the bridge without blocking it, stopping at the opposite end, where a general meeting takes place. The arrests of those who occupy the road don't stop while the event is dissolved. At the end of the day there will be 252 people arrested, including 26 journalists. Throughout all American cities more than 300. In two months, i.e. since the birth of the movement, arrests are 1,400. There is determination, anger, desire to fight. On the Web thousands and thousands pages rise dedicated to the movement and its manifestations. Millions of photos and videos circulate as documentation. We wonder what will be our limit.
Occupy the general intellect
On the Web there are our pictures at Liberty Square. Some of them are in high-resolution, you can distinguish those details that are coveted by the entire band of geeks moving around the OWS. We don't look at all like the antisocial nerd stereotype. In the photos you see the red granite tables of the park covered by laptops, routers, smart phones, power suppliers, cables. It's our Media Center, our wireless network, our interface with the world. You can see the bicycle serving as engine-generator. You can see the Freedom Tower, which is the transceiver of our mesh network. Now there's nothing left. During the eviction, the police smashed everything.
They called Freedom Tower few modems and six radio antennas mounted on a ten feet tall pole. It was not just a free and public Wi-Fi, it was the embryo of a new type of Internet for Occupy Wall Street. The destruction of the material is nothing but a stupid provocation, it is useless. A project like ours cannot be stopped. If we want, we can collect the money in one hour, in three hours we can re-activate everything. At the moment we have four local Wi-Fi networks in New York, Austin, San Antonio and Los Angeles. The Egyptians of Tahrir Square were the first to create a mesh network to counteract the block of government communications. But this is only one of the aspects of what is happening.
It's fascinating: the sudden flood of protest, its modalities, its symbols. From Tunisia to Egypt, from Greece to Spain anger had already exploded, but it's from New York, from Liberty Square, that neurons of the social brain have begun to take action in sync. There was a very fast evolutionary process that gave rise to a form of life that is able, now, to influence the further development. Our Freedom Tower is just a prosthesis of the Media Center and this is one of the prosthesis in movement. They are living prostheses that don't replace a limb or an organ but supplement it. They amplify our collective brain, they have already been replicated and will replicate again, they will evolve. As one of us said, we are the cancer of capitalism, our metastases will kill it.
Perhaps the metaphor is a bit gruesome and for the moment also optimistic. However it's certain that a work of genetic engineering is in operation, a process of breakdown and recombination of the social DNA. At the moment Occupy Wall Street uses the language it finds, the one that can be detected by signs, by speech, by the sites on the web. But the language of the real process in progress is already of another world, as if a new form of life was rising. Besides, more than one scientist has studied the phenomenon: our species during the last millennium had an extra-body evolution, i.e. technical and social, that proceeds infinitely faster than the biological one.
The WEB had a thrill when Wired published the video of the first OWS drone. Drones are robots equipped with cameras, several sensors, or even rockets. Today they are normally used during war. The police in different countries is about to use them in order to control the urban riots. Well, we anticipated the enemy: we built ourselves the first drone used in a urban revolt. In Warsaw we spied from the air the movements of the riot police. A weapon can be either pointed at us or by us. It's a machine that humans build. Like all machines it copies our limbs and our senses. It produces, stores, calculates, builds automated systems that already in nineteenth century were compared to products of the social brain, able to represent not only an extension of our body but also of our intelligence. Machines communicate with each other and with us through their own language. Occupy Wall Street is a cyborg, an open bio-cybernetic organism, able to absorb information, filter it, use it or ignore it.
The simplest cybernetic mechanism is about receiving data from the environment and, depending on how it's regulated, operating devices that produce a change of the environment itself. Our body regulates its own temperature, but if changes are too huge, the brain orders to light a fire or to seek shade. With the same principle the thermostat was invented. The simplest representation of this behavior is a sequence like this: if such a thing happens, then you act in this way, otherwise in another one. A living body reacts in this way, as a machine designed for a purpose, a whole society or a portion of it does. Twitter is a social network created to communicate. It has evolved filtering, adding and deleting information, depending on the needs of those who used it. We can polarize the network with three simple commands: withdraw information from the network, put it in, or delete it.
We can say that in broad terms all our society, like the biological world, works according to these simple elements of information. There will certainly be someone who will bring into play the unfathomable wonders of the mind, the irreducibility of Man to a series of bio-physical laws, but in nature most of the real complexities of the relationship is nothing else than an extension, an elaboration of those little information or commands.
Obviously the world has exceeded a certain threshold, so that the social sensor (if, withdraw) of a part of the humanity records that it's necessary to do something (then, enter). The primary information that gave rise to demonstrations is obviously the intolerance to the system of life even before the economic one. Many elements of society (99%) have developed this primary information by adding a "guilty" (1%). Once the information minimally processed has spread and turned to be shared, we have realized that this system needed to be reset, a re-polarization on new parameters, and that the result had to be obtained with the drastic negation of the existing parameters (otherwise, delete). Right, the society is not a computer, it's not a social network and is more complex than a small software for Twitter, but in the meantime can someone try to explain with the psychology, the sociology, politics or religion, the rise of a movement that in two months has led in the squares millions of people tired to lead a hard life, without meaning?
After six months of incubation, from the Tunisian revolt, from the now famous occupied squares, at Zuccotti Park in the heart of New York, just steps away from Wall Street, our movement has taken the first, crucial information: occupy. What? The heart of the 1%, the world's largest stock market. How? Physically, mobilizing thousands of people. To do what? To demonstrate, to show that we had enough. To have a physical location from which to communicate with the world. We are only at the first level of the withdrawing and the information taken has been yet transformed into information entered. We don't go home to start a week later, we remain, we plant the tents, we build an operating computer center, we create a strongly organized structure (which will be like a network rather than a pyramid). Above all, we organize not only to organize, to manifest, to be many. The movement must be inclusive, which means embracing the 99% of the population, but it must be clear that it is aimed at a different society. For now you can call it as you like, but a different one from the present one.
Zuccotti Park was the reservoir of new information. After having withdrawn it from a society in revolt and worked it out, it now enters it so that others can pick it. At this point the position of the physical location no longer matters, it has spread around the world, it lives on the Net, it is physically ubiquitous. It was an evolutionary meme, it remains as a symbol, but it could disappear. The movement has reached a critical threshold, it cannot be stopped. In Oakland it declares a general strike. In New York it discovers that the organizational and logistical effort involving thousands of people is not an end in itself but constitutes social relations. It sympathizes with Chinese workers in struggle, it supports the struggle of the Egyptians back in the streets, thousands of hot meals are distributed:
"The movement can do much more than protest. We can also do something for each other. Around the world there are people still homeless, trapped in poverty, debt and foreclosures. The economic disparities are tremendous. But today we remind ourselves and the world that we can be satisfied with the solidarity [that we put into practice]. Today from Oakland to Washington, wherever they are present, the occupiers are sitting at the common table " (OWS homepage, 11/24).
Occupy Wall Street has a life of its own, is already a foreign body in this society, a living organism whose genetic code is open source, no one can patent it. The general assembly that coordinates it is based on this principle (which was the Paris Commune's one): members replaceable at any time. Indeed, as the assembly meets every day and no one can be present all the time, the replacement is automatic. Those who think to see in us an anarchist movement are wrong. We are well organized and apply centralism. The network has differential nodes, some are hubs, others come and go. There is definitely an interest in painting us different from what we are. Just go to the Web and read what on average the information professionals say about us. They don't understand anything. However, the mainstream media can tell what they want about us. It's generally better when they ignore us. We definitely ignore them. Our "media visibility" is the movement itself. For the rest, our future is closely tied to what we will be able to do with the third command, delete. Delete everything is inherent with this shameful society. It's the hardest to turn on. It's the one that will tell us if we will be able to survive or whether we will be heading to the next extinction.
Occupy the World
On the 15th October 2011, organized rioting demonstrators from thousands cities in eighty countries have raised signs with the basic message of the American Occupiers. We are the 99% and 1% keeps calling the shots, gobbling everything and forcing us all to the circle of unfulfilled desire. The message takes very well root outside America too. There it had to break down with the taboos of ownership, wealth, opportunities for all. Or maybe it was already no longer a taboo. Here in Europe the topic of property is part of the political dictionary.
Maybe the American message affects archetypes, ancestral memories we bring along. The early Christians were not so well disposed towards the property, as the parable of the rich, the camel and the eye of the needle tells. During Middle Ages heretical communities had arisen against abuse of property and wealth. Even the liberal Adam Smith was convinced that the state should prevent perversions due to richness hoarding. Marx has settled the matter by a theoretical point of view, tracing processes of value formation and those of its distribution among classes. As you know, he came to conclusion that is not a matter of a fair share of the value, but rather it's about removing classes. It's about changing the working time into lifetime. Revolutions never occurred to redistribute wealth according to "justice". They have always been totalitarian: the winner takes it all. The bourgeoisie did it, and got the brains also. Indeed we are still here to raise the basic message signs with 99/100. It is clear that it is not a matter of form but of strength.
As Europeans, we think we are smarter than Americans. We laugh at their very naive claims that capitalism should be just different of what it is. We read Marx, Bakunin, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, or Debord and we meticulously scattered society with enclosed areas, calling them with the "isms", almost always referring to those Great Men who would have made history. Now look at this landslide: we're all becoming Americans. We're all indignant, all open, all non-violent. All, that is, those of the new generation; because older people got screwed up in front of TV. Forty years ago the young Americans crawled flowers in the barrels of rifles pointing at them and it seems they didn't loose the bad habit, as clips report. Theory often diverges from practice, that's when troubles start. When the clash gets a certain level, it blows all around, and the Americans, we must give them credit, they never hanged back.
However, the threshold is not always exceeded, and as you approach, there is always time to discuss about violence or nonviolence. Of course this debate is only a shameful product of ideology, and its results are so elastic as to be used at your convenience. In nature, this duality does not exist. Instead there are events, causes and effects, processes and interactions. The molecules of a overheated gas bustle. It's all about finding out how, drawing a theory, and doing calculations. It occurs to no one to make moral judgments on their behavior.
Human beings are social molecules. If the environment becomes overheated, they stress out. Or they fidget and the environment gets excessively hot. Although not possessing a nervous system, unicellar organisms are able to show a series of "intelligent" behaviors like the molecules of our social species. For example, when they search for food, they start to stir in a chaotic way as soon as the food decreases. Instead of cooling themselves not to dissipate too much energy, they do exactly the opposite. Trying desperately to eat to survive, they eat more quickly what remains. Capitalistic man is gradually missing too many things. Increasing of agitation is just natural as for the environment getting excessively hot.
Being man a social animal, his needs are widely more complex than the ones of a unicellar organism. He gets worried long time before the lack of food. On the contrary, at the basic level of survival he might suffer of starvation, while he gets enormously pissed off when someone takes away from him what he has conquered. All the more so, when he begins to make comparisons with what he might be instead of with what he has been.
Today the bourgeoisie, assisted by an obliging crowd of bootlickers, raises up to the sky unbearable complaints dealing with violence in the Parisian banlieues, in the English cities' marginal neighborhoods, in Greek, Arab or American squares. But in its history it got rid of feudals certainly not pleasantly asking them if they could get out of the way: the guillotine worked all day long, it defeated dynastic armies, put Europe and America to the sword and further it continued the work by colonizing the world with the methods that we do know. Above all, it bowed to wage slavery billions of proletarians while gouging out their blood. Today, it talks about non-violence while it's driving several millions of people to death by war; then unmercifully suppresses any movement that is against its interest to support and foment bloody civil war. So, violence by whom and upon whom?
Capitalistic peacekeepers afraid of subversive growth call the movement from time to time communist, anarchist-insurrectionist, thugs, criminals, rogues. They pretend not to know that the world is gone into fibrillation since February. They removed the Gini's index, Pareto's law and patterns for extreme inequality of incomes. They banished from history huge riots due to "non-living" in a wicked society, as they did with fires of the past in the capitalistic paradise of America, in Chicago, Watts, Los Angeles. They believe they can use two hundred thousandsa year Chinese proletarians and peasants riots against "the communism" of Beijing, whose "communist" paradise overwhelms them all.
Protests and riots in North Africa and in the Middle East did not produce any change so they never ceased to be. Uncountable general strikes are taking place in Athens, where job cutting and firing is forcing dozens of thousands of people to escape from cities to return to the country where someone can at least survive. There are about ten millions of "atypical" over exploited workers in Italy. Two or three millions of people are unemployed. Everyone is involved in this mess, everyone knows someone that wouldn't make it without someone else's help, or see someone practically starving around. In England, the almost total de-industrialization has produced pockets of poverty which are comparable to the Third World. Eastern European working class people has experienced at first hand the advent of the ferocious Western neoliberalism instead of the decrepit East Keynesianism, and Polland, one of the highest social tension country, has already seen large demonstrations organized by Occupy Warsaw.
Even a dummy would understand by pure statistical calculation that among the mass of millions of pissed off young people, there's someone who necessarily begins to stir. And since a nervous system makes a man a little bit more complex than a bacterium, the exchange of information doesn't apply by vibrissae touches, but through the Internet, traveling by train or by plane from one city to another, as by venting the anger against the symbols of those who promise the heaven of the god money and afterwards deny it.
Belly and legs come before the theoretical layout, the organization comes at last. "We do not want any leader!", the youth shout throughout thousands cities : hopefully they understand not only that almost all the leaders of the past have betrayed, but also that today's revolution needs no leader anymore. And hopefully they understand that potential candidates are likely to be infiltrators from that 1% mentioned by signs. It is obvious that sooner or later they will have to think about organizing. Facebook is not enough and it is State's interest to make a nice confusion between hooligans and indignados, Marxists and criminals. For the moment, the movement is opposing the infiltration, but in London the politique-politicienne, which is today's feasible politics, has married the most vile informing. In Athens it has beaten the "violents" by picketed as to defend the parliament. In Rome it has marshaled an impressive sample of improvised cops, including pathetic ex-smashers, much more hard-liners than the state pigs (young people, if there's any chance you have once followed them, bear in mind what they say today!). Somehow it's fine: it was time for political champions to rise to the surface. The margin for the mystification is getting narrower, it's quite clear that whatever they think or say about themselves, the window breakers represent an effective litmus test. Violence? Come on, aside from the historic advent of the bourgeoisie, it is so obvious to point out that every single day, all over the world six thousand people die in the workplace, that the beloved cars burnt in riots cause more than three thousands, that medical malpractice causes one hundred thousand deads, not to mention wars, and so on.
Some say that the attacks of the youngsters, the flames, charges of the police, arrests, have dimmed the great demonstration of the 300,000in Rome, of 100,000 in Athens, 30,000 in Oakland as those held in thousands cities worldwide. That's right. But only because the media profit by sensational events and not by the grey routine. Procession-like demonstrations with no aim have become pointless, they are indeed grey routine. Nothing is more soporific than the humdrum union's routine, nothing is more melancholic than the young shouting "No violence!" while getting a good thrashing by the police (seen in Madrid, by this time typical in America). Nothing is more mystifying than proclaiming oneself "indignant" rather than angry, rebellious, subversive, or even communist (as far as you know what this means).
The intellectual, the priest, the moralist are filled with indignation; the politician and the journalist as well, because of a professional duty. But it's easy to see how effective sixty years of indignation against the bourgeois power's expression have been. Thank goodness media coverage ignores the dullness of the innocent indignant and the pernicious politicians, extensively showing the indigestible tip of the iceberg. The telluric potential, which has devastated half of the world, can only have two options to keep on manifesting itself; it can either mature into radical forms, giving itself goals and organization, or integrate itself into the current political practice.
During 2011 millions of people braved States' weapons risking their own lives. Thousands have died and are dying without a programmatic perspective, just because they had enough of their meaningless life. The photogenic flames, the masked boys, the police phalanxes of western metropolis, tear gas, pepper spray: all are epiphenomena of a planetary chaos where the survival of an unsound system is at stake. Paradoxically, where deception is greatest there is the maximum potential. The Western bourgeoisie had just breathed a sigh of relief saying "yes, in North Africa and the Middle East, they fought for democracy, but since here we have democracy ...". Here is the answer, faster than the homologated thought: also "here" in thousand cities, millions of people are fighting against the meaningless life. On the 99% signs there is no demand, just a statement. It will be tough to take a new direction, but which "demand", which "reform" will ever be able to undermine the nature of a social system? When the sit-in took place on Brooklyn bridge, police arrested almost 700 occupiers on 2,000, a high percentage which makes you think. Afterwards, the major of NY allowed the crowd in a ghetto-square where it could let off steam without pestering the life of anyone. But then regretting it and moving everybody out with the help of riot police.
Typical. And then what? The American bourgeoisie, the 1% that matters, has already expressed its feelings: "Kill those Bolsheviks, tear them to pieces." They already said that about the free Web's hackers, who weren't that dangerous at the end of the day. Beatings and pepper spray tortures images have traveled all over the world. Now get yourself indignant, if you like.
It is known, many tell about refusing the "violence" but in their hearts they are sick of demagogy and they are happy when the deadly processions are broken off. Even the Americans, who are so inclined to a non violent policy in the current phase, sometimes lose their patience. Anyhow the great mass of protesters remains inactive compared to either the "thugs" and improvised sub-cops of parties and homologated political groups. The latter now seem totally unprepared. Good old days of policing are gone. Embittered by impotence, they have restricted themselves to invective. It's indeed rare to see them playing the cops as those Stalinists did in front of the parliament of Athens.
In front of explosion of anger a sort of obliteration of its causes catches on and "provocation" is dragged in. Conspiracy theories are very popular. There's an obsessive search for supposedly hidden motives behind events or behind people's actions and words: who pushes who or what. Actually, under this guise of organization by the window-breakers, there's a simple reason: the only coordination they take is based on modern, distributed, shared, international, easy to use means of communication. It's an ordered spontaneity to which almost anywhere the old political organizations and trade unions have joined the queue. They have lost the initiative. Facing a total refusal of the society they are caught off guard because they still stick to the old reformist claiming model.
They cannot even catch the reason why an occupier from Los Angeles marched holding a package paper with the slogan "let us be human". In a context where the word "Greed" is so much used, along with 99/1 symbol, we try to translate: we try not to be beasts enslaved by money. While in the whole world the only claim is to make more money. Humanity isn't scheduled. The concept of humanity is very closed to the interclass one and, as a matter of fact, today the working class is totally lacking as a class. However there's a slight hint of social division into two sharply contrasting groups: on the one hand those who are (or think they are) against capitalism, on the other hand those who are more or less comfortably using all its categories such as politics, union, parliament and democracy. This kind of division is making bourgeoisie filled with hysteria, a basic and unmistakable fear. However, there is nothing to be worried about for the ruling class apparatus, apart from the creeping (for them) worldwide spreading of the protest and its web organization.
Against the backdrop of a society which is no longer working, redeeming, famous, corrupting crumpets of the banquet are running out. The on going process is irreversible. There is no escaping from the historical crisis of the value. May the reflections on society cause chaos and repression or not, the old political categories already came to their end, led by hysterical zombie. Capitalism is not in danger at the moment if not because of itself. Though the belief of a different way of living is creeping among people. For standardized observers it is jut surprising that right in the US a deep anti-capitalistic feeling is raising. We couldn't wait to see this. The lack of a base for an international movement like that, or the lack of a center, of leaders, the absence of any political plan, even claiming something, can puzzle. Lacks which makes the movement to be considered nothing by current norms.
The mere shower of organized protests of the 99% against the 1% might seem either a waste of useless' energy and also a bit stupid. But if we were into the shoes of bourgeoisie, we would pray the heavens to see Occupy the World to drain away quickly, before this great mass of pissed off people could dig out something useful and clever. Things that is happening already anyway: in Oakland the movement has yet successfully called a general civil strike, while another one is in preparation for the entire western coast of U.S. along with the dockworkers. The number of proletarians involved is increasing throughout United States. Everywhere this movement is dragging along traditional organizations without being awfully subjected to them.
This article was entirely made by withdrawing from the Web. Apart from the large amount of "official" material taken from sites cited in the bibliography, we used sources obtained by some of the thousands comments "posted" in the pages of various sites, blogs, forums, etc.. The two interviews Occupy the top and Occupy the market are "genuine", meaning they are obtained with a collage of statements actually made by two persons in a financial site. We have just re-written them in the style of the entire article and added some posts taken from other sites of the same type. The battle of Wall Street, which ended in Foley Square and Brooklyn, has been reconstructed on the basis of the chronology seen on the site of OWS, compared with the related posts and with the map of Manhattan. All the figures in the article have been verified. The final chapter is an adaptation and an extension of a digital flyer we distributed on the Web after the events of October the 15th. The millions of signs self-produced by the occupiers around the world are themselves an essential element to fully understand the movement OWS.
USEFUL READINGS
Occupy Wall Street, official website of the movement: http://occupywallst.org/
Occupy Wall Street, detailed Wikipedia page on the movement and its origins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
Occupy Oakland, linked site: http://www.occupyoakland.org/. See also Occupy Los Angeles, Boston, Portland, Huston, Miami, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, Washington, etc.
Occupy Together, global coordination site: http://www.occupytogether.org/
We are 99 percent, members' profiles: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
Take the Square, the General Assembly page, the center of the organizational and logistical movement Occupy Wall Street http://takethesquare.net/
Arab Spring, site of Wikipedia on the "Arab Spring" recalled by OWS Homepage as a tactical example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
Anonymous Communications, Web Site Interface Group of the hacktivist Anonymous http://anonops.blogspot.com/ Anonymous (The official site, Anonymous Operations reported as dangerous by some anti-virus: http://anonops.com/).
Occupy Italy, site under construction: http://www.occupyitaly.org/. On the official American web site in the map OWS various communities are indicated in Torino, Biella, Milano, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Treviso, Firenze, Arezzo, Roma, Napoli and Palermo. Trieste, which is rather active, is missing.
Footage of the Polish OWS drone http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/17/warsaw-protester-launches-drone-to-spy-on-police/
A guide to the API to Occupy Wall Street, trying to explain through a programming language the fascinating evolution of the global revolt and its peculiar social characteristics: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/a-guide-to-the-occupy-wall-street-api-
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