Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Occupied Wall Street Journal: A Protest’s Ink-Stained Fingers (N.Y. Times)

Published on Monday, October 10, 2011 by The New York Times

by David Carr

At the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zuccotti Park, you’ll find all of the essentials of a state-of-the-art protest: drum circles, cheeky and plaintive handwritten signs, and, next to a thrumming generator, a hub of social media activity, including live streaming of the proceedings.The Occupied Wall Street Journal,”a four-page, full-color broadsheet newspaper, has gained surprising traction as a tool of protest at the Occupy Wall Street rallies in Manhattan.

But amid the accouterments of modern political action, you will also find, of all things, a broadsheet newspaper, The Occupied Wall Street Journal. It is not some tatty, hand-drawn piece of protest samizdat, but a professionally produced, four-color, four-page document of the demonstration, which began on Sept. 17.

“Get your newspaper, get your free Occupied Wall Street Journal!” shouted one barker. Getting something in the hands of your average New Yorker is a pretty tough sell, but The Occupied Wall Street Journal was eagerly received, even by the people who just came to gawk, in part because it answered the question of what all the hubbub was about.

Forgive an old newspaper hack a moment of sentimentality, but it is somehow reassuring that a newspaper still has traction in an environment preoccupied by social media. It makes sense when you think about it: newspapers convey a sense of place, of actually being there, that digital media can’t. When is the last time somebody handed you a Web site?

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Where OWS and the Tea Party are coming from (Salon)

FRIDAY, OCT 21, 2011 8:00 AM EDT

Two very different movements with common roots in the failing center

BY ARUN GUPTA

 

One month into the Occupy Wall Street protests, many are asking if this new movement is just a “left-wing Tea Party.”

Definitely not. This is not a party, like the Tea Party, that seeks to directly shape the policy and electoral process. Because it is explicitly leaderless, it is difficult to imagine a Michele Bachmann or Eric Cantor emerging as a standard bearer of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Given their reliance on Wall Street money, as well as radical demands from many protesters, the Democrats will find it almost impossible to channel “the 99%” into an electoral tidal wave next year, the way the Republicans rode the Tea Party to victory in 2010.

But that does not mean comparisons to the Tea Party should be dismissed. There are striking parallels between the two movements when viewed through the lenses of politics, society and history.

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“Wall Street vs. Main Street” chat (The New Yorker)

October 24, 2011

The Big Story: Wall Street vs. Main Street

Posted by 
On Monday night, The New Yorkers editor, David Remnick, moderated a discussion on the Occupy Wall Street protests, featuring the staff writers John Cassidy and Jill Lepore, along with Arun Gupta (The Indypendent), Priscilla Grim (The Occupied Wall Street Journal), and former Governor Eliot Spitzer.

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Media Blackout on Wall Street?

An episode of Al Jazeera‘s Listening Post in which I discuss the media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

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What the occupation means to me

October 14, 2011

by Arun Gupta

Co-founder of The Indypendent and The Occupied Wall Street Journal

Wall Street occupiers march on Columbus Day

PERHAPS THE most wondrous aspect of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement is that there are lessons for everyone. For the 99 percent, it’s that we still have agency, power and imagination. For the ruling 1 percent, you can’t throw people into despair and deprivation and not expect a social explosion. For the mainstream media, you can’t fit genuine democracy into five-second sound bites or look for anointed leaders. For the right, you can’t cheer revolts and uprisings one minute and condemn them the next.

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Interview on CBC

Here is the recent interview I did with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation talking about the Wall Street protests and The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

via http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/video/marketnews-24080783/#video=26864766

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Arun Gupta: The Occupied Wall Street Journal (GritTV)

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