Willie Osterweil

So broadly speaking, even amongst radicals, most people are open to thinking about new directions, but they don’t have a fully coherently defined vision of where they’re going and how to go forward.

The first week of massive protests that are shaking Turkey to its core is coming to an end, but the protests are anything but ending.

Last Monday five thousand people poured into Ivanofio Stadium in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, for a concert headlined by Thanassis Papakonstantinou, one of Greece’s foremost folk musicians. The stadium was packed, sold out, and more than a thousand people were left outside, unable to enter and hear the concert. On any other Monday, such a show would be unremarkable, just another event in Greece’s vibrant cultural and educational capital. But on Monday, February 11, these thousands were not just there for the music, they were there in solidarity with the workers of Vio.Me.

This week, Strike Debt tweeted out triumphantly: “It’s a new era. First machine fired up at worker owned factory. #NewEraWindowsandDoors”. For those of us who’ve been following news about the Chicago factory formerly known as Republic Windows and Doors, this was the culmination of years of struggle. It’s an exciting moment, and a victory which hopefully can inspire other factories across the country.

The rise of the Brazilian economy, as with all of the “BRICS” countries, is a story often told in breathless tones of admiration and boosterism. But the “other side” of the economic expansion: the poverty of the favelas, the dislocation of agrarian workers (which has given birth to a very powerful popular movement, The Landless Worker’s Movement), etc. has come into focus as growth has slowed dramatically in Brazil this year.

By now, most people know that ‘Occupation’ as a tactic was not invented by 2000 of us at Zuccotti park on September 17.

The occupation is a powerful tactic for a number of reasons: it foregrounds the political issues of everyday life and public space, it produces a positive communitarian solution to the problems it critiques, it is highly visible and struggle is continuous in a way that radicalizes its participants. It has been used throughout history in fights for social justice, peace, and revolution, but now its moment has truly arrived, and there are many more occupations to come.