Thank You, Anarchy
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Thank You, Anarchy is an up-close, inside account of Occupy Wall Street’s first year in New York City, written by one of the first reporters to cover the phenomenon. Nathan Schneider chronicles the origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising always just beyond their control. Capturing the voices, encounters, and beliefs that powered the movement, Schneider brings to life the General Assembly meetings, the chaotic marches, the split-second decisions, and the moments of doubt as Occupy swelled from a hashtag online into a global phenomenon. A compelling study of the spirit that drove this watershed movement, Thank You, Anarchy vividly documents how the Occupy experience opened new social and political possibilities and registered a chilling indictment of the status quo. It was the movement’s most radical impulses, this account shows, that shook millions out of a failed tedium and into imagining, and fighting for, a better kind of future.
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THANK YOU, ANARCHY
NOTES FROM THE OCCUPY APOCALYPSE
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That first meeting was hosted by the coalition behind Bloombergville, New Yorkers against Budget Cuts, which had exchanged e-mails with Adbusters. Others learned about the assembly at a report-back from anti-austerity movements around the world at the nearby 16 Beaver Street art space on July 31. What was advertised as an open assembly began like a rally, with Workers World Party members and those of other groups making speeches over a portable PA system to the hundred or so people there. But the anarchists started to heckle the socialists, and the socialists heckled back. The meeting melted down. Here’s how one participant, Jeremy Bold, described what took place in an e-mail the next day:
[A] few participants were adamantly opposed to the initial speak-out sessions being voiced through the loudspeaker, proclaiming that it was “not a general assembly” and demanding that a more open GA be created. Though organizers quickly shifted to the general assembly structure for the meeting, maintaining use of the loudspeaker caused the opposed participants to organize their own assembly, causing a brief bifurcation in the group: one group utilizing the GA structure of an open floor but maintaining the loudspeaker to contend with the traffic noise, the other group seating themselves in a circle closer to Bowling Green park. The breakaway faction had objected to the format because it appeared to function more like a rally than a GA and expressed concerns about being forced to speak under a particular political party or viewpoint [, and the breakaway faction] voiced this criticism; as they broke off to begin the GA, participants were stuck between the two groups. As the power began to die from the loudspeaker, the group voted by simple majority to move to the traditional GA and joined the circle, in which the GA was already under way.
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