Abstract
In this interview, activist and public intellectual Micah White reflects on his role as co-creator of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. OWS was the fulcrum of Occupy, a grassroots movement that quickly spread to public squares in cities across the globe. Occupy sought to bring about broad-based prosperity for the People, epitomized in its call to action: ‘We are the 99 percent.’ In White’s words: ‘The goal of Occupy was an actual change in the political regime, and actual transformation of who had power in our world.’ White reflects on the fallout of OWS, which he characterizes as a ‘constructive failure,’ and the lessons he carried forward in his ongoing activist work and brief foray into municipal politics in rural Oregon. Taking a longitudinal view of revolutionary movements in the West (from the turn of the twentieth century to the present), White makes a provocative proposal: ‘I think we should use protests to win elections.’ His argument would make many of his fellow organizers, particularly those opposed to the current system of corporate-led governance, bristle. And yet, White argues that the viability—and sustainability—of social movements depends upon turning to, and ultimately transforming, electoral politics to reflect the collectivist ethos of Left politics.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Why Occupy Wall Street Will Keep Up the Fight,’ The Washington Post, November 18, 2011.
- 2.
Citizen’s United refers to the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling that enabled unlimited spending by corporations and unions on ads to influence elections.
- 3.
In his article for The Guardian, ‘I started Occupy. Russia tried to co-opt me’ (November 2, 2017), White contextualizes the color revolutions in the following way:
Russia’s attempts to foment, stage and manage social protest in western democracies is a strategic response to allegedly American-funded “color revolutions” like the Rose, Orange and Tulip revolutions against Russian-allied governments in Georgia (2003–2004), Ukraine (2004–2005) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) along with, arguably, the Arab Spring (2010–2012) and Euromaidan Revolution (2013–2014).
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White, M., Alvarez, N., Zaiontz, K. (2019). INTERVIEW Protest After Occupy: Rethinking the Repertoires of Left Activism. In: Alvarez, N., Lauzon, C., Zaiontz, K. (eds) Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11557-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11557-9_2
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