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Why I quit the mainstream media
Natasha Lennard, Salon
Journalism must break the chains of objectivity and report truth — and the Occupy movement led me to do just that
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… In my view, it now makes little sense to be objective about Occupy Wall Street and its various, amorphous iterations across the country. As Matt Taibbi wrote recently in Rolling Stone about learning to love OWS: “People don’t know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.”
If the diffuse and experimental disruptions, discussions, assemblies, occupations, strikes, marches, chants and more that constitute OWS are primarily coherent only in so far as they agree that the current status quo, rife with inequity and cruelty, is wrong — I cannot but consider myself in agreement. As such, it would be disingenuous to play the “objective reporter.”
I am incredibly lucky to have interned and worked for institutions like the New York Times and Politico; the training, exposure and practice that these publications offer are in many ways unparalleled. But it is also with some pride that I have stopped writing for publications that aim for journalistic objectivity.
There is a loose analogy here with how Occupy Wall Street’s structure stands at odds with mainstream, electoral politics. Many of those involved in Occupy Wall Street have, with excellent cause, expressed dissatisfaction with representative politics in this country. In response, occupiers have sought new political spaces and interactions; they have taken politics into their own hands.
Similarly, if the mainstream media prides itself on reporting the facts, I have found too many problems with what does or does not get to be a fact — or what rises to the level of a fact they believe to be worth reporting — to be part of such a machine. Going forward, I want to take responsibility for my voice and the facts that I choose and relay. I want them to instigate change.
Natasha Lennard was a stringer for the NY Times.
(15 November 2011)
Oakland Mayoral Adviser Tells Keith Olbermann Why He Quit
truthdig
Dan Siegel was a friend and legal adviser to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, but he resigned his post the same day police cleared the Occupy Oakland encampment.
Siegel is a civil rights lawyer and activist who has lived and worked in Oakland for many years. He is also a Truthdig contributor.
VIDEO AT ORIGINAL
(15 November 2011)
Occupy Wall Street, Faces Of Zuccotti Park: The Columbia Economics Professor
Saki Knafo, Huffington Post
This is the seventh piece in a series profiling the protestors at Occupy Wall Street.
Even before it became clear that the economy was streaking toward disaster, Suresh Naidu figured something like this would happen. “It’s been no secret in economics that inequality has gone up,” he said recently. Naidu is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and it seemed obvious to him that high inequality plus a high unemployment rate would result in political turmoil.
Then, one day in September, Zuccotti Park filled with protesters, and soon, Naidu was leading a free Sunday morning seminar on economics in the park’s southeast corner.
His seminar usually draws about 20 people, and topics vary from “what the banks actually do,” to “the problems and promise” of co-ops, credit unions, and alternative currencies — when might they be a good idea, when might they be a bad idea.”
At first, he said, he wanted to keep his Occupy Wall Street role separate from his work as an economist. Then he started hearing calls to ‘end the Fed,’ and to bring back the gold standard.
“There were a lot of bad ideas floating around down there,” he said. “When you actually push people on those ideas, it turns out it’s based on a not-so-perfect understanding of what they’re really upset about and what the economics look like.”
Naidu is not the only academic aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement, nor is he the most well-known by a long shot. His Columbia colleague Joseph Stiglitz makes occasional appearances at the park, and Cornel West has become a tuxedoed star of the media coverage.
[Click here to watch a video of Naidu participating in a Columbia panel on the protest.]
What sets Naidu apart is the extent to which he’s involved in the day-to-day activities of the Zuccotti community.
(11 November 2011)
Occupy Wall Street and the U.S. Labor Movement
Farooque Chowdhury and Michael D. Yates, Cheap Motels and Hot Plates
Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
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The Occupy Wall Street Uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for the past several years has finally burst into the open. Suddenly, everything seems different, and a political opening for more radical thinking and acting is certainly at hand.
One especially important opening is the possible alliance between those who are organizing OWS efforts and the labor movement. Workers are the 99 percent, and their organization as workers within the OWS framework could help to transform an uprising into a movement for a radical transformation of what is a sick and dehumanizing social system. Most OWS organizers, participants, and supporters are members of the working class, and thousands of rank-and-file union members have participated in and offered material aid to OWS. And recently, OWS encampments in various places have taken up specific labor struggles, while labor OWS contingents have spearheaded other concrete actions. These have included OWS Atlanta support for people facing foreclosures, New York City OWS protests on behalf of workers at Sothebys, and, most dramatically, OWS Oakland’s massive march that shut the Port of Oakland. An “Out of the Park and Into the Streets” demonstration called by Occupy Wall Street in New York City for November 17 has been endorsed by scores of unions.
… Chowdhury and Yates (hereinafter C&Y): What are your impressions of the OWS Uprising?
Stephanie Luce: Occupy Wall Street is the moment we’ve been waiting for. It isn’t perfect and it is often messy, but it somehow has become the message and movement to unite hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of isolated individuals who have been suffering in the worsening economy and feeling alienated and demoralized.
In the past decade, labor and left leaders have been scrambling to find the thing that would catch on: national networks, new slogans, targeted campaigns. Some had limited success but nothing seemed to click. Why this?
I’d argue that one reason the OWS has flourished is precisely because it wasn’t coordinated and imposed from above. There was no consultant hired to “message” the movement, no mass produced signs and t-shirts. Those who joined the initial occupation on September 17, and probably everyone who has participated since, have felt some ownership of this movement.
Jon Flanders: The occupation movement represents both a generational shift and a
beginning of much broader class consciousness in the United States.
Generational, because for the first time, a movement has emerged that is not led by boomers of the anti-Vietnam War era. After the initial huge outpouring of opposition to the Iraq war, everything quieted down, despite the best efforts of experienced organizers who thought that history would repeat itself. Instead, it became clear that the young people did not see this war as an issue for them, partly because there was no draft, but also because they were preoccupied with getting a start in life in an increasingly difficult economy.
Class conscious, because the realization finally sank in for the young ones that things were not going to get better, that in fact they were dealing with a corrupt and rigged political system that had no place for them, except as indentured debt slaves. The initial awakening was in Wisconsin, now it has spread countrywide, and the class genie is out of the bottle.
(15 November 2011)
