Politics and Social Movements

A first edition of a new publication about the Occupy Movement: Occupy Theory

Read it!

(Note: this article is currently being written. It is a draft!)

How much do social movements depend on good weather for their success?

Will the Occupy Movement be able to survive the winter? If so, when will it come back a full-strength?

To answer these questions, I examine several indicators of social movement strength over time. I focus on the United States as it generally (outside of Hawaii, some territories, and parts of the West Coast) has a strong variation in temperature between summer and winter.

Late Tuesday night I was hanging out in my kitchen and I mentioned to one of my roommates that there was a significant peak in Twitter rumors that the police were going to evict Occupy Philly.

I took it with a big grain of salt. After all it was Twitter, the rumors fly like crazy, and people love to say that you cannot predict when the police will come!

I finished cooking, went back to my computer and as I ate my food I realized that there was an eviction in process. I then biked down to the Occupation and marched around for the next three hours.

Most participants recognize that the Occcupy Movement needs to evolve. The question is how?

A Tactic is NOT a Strategy
We should be flexible with our tactics, while we continue to work for the same set of goals (economic equality, democracy, and justice for all).

Over the past two weeks, the level of conflict within Occupy Philadelphia has risen to a new peak.

We may still chant "This is what Democracy looks like." But Occupy Philly is looking less and less like a democracy.

Slightly over a month into the Occupy Philly movement, we are losing momentum. Students (and this is a heavily youth movement) are focusing on their studies as the semester ends. The unemployed are probably looking for work. The employed are burning out from working full-time and trying to attend daily General Assemblies.

I've recently added some resources to CampusActivism.org that are useful for the Occupation Movement.

Please upload resources (leaflets, posters, tactic suggestions, how to run a general assembly, etc) to www.CampusActivism.org.

Websites Creating Resources
How To Occupy

Occupy Winning

Occupy Research (research group)

There is a group of people doing research on the Occupation Movements:
Occupy Research

I'm collecting survey results. This is what I have so far:

Survey #1
An in person survey of 198 people at Zuccotti Park on Oct 10/11.
NYC Occupation Survey.

Some results
-56% men (whereas activists tend to be 55% women)

As of Saturday at 4pm, Julia and I counted 225 tents at Occupy Philadelphia (195 personal tents and 30 work tents/canopies). The media team put out a press release saying 300. We were relatively strict, but we did include two child play tents. A more generous count method would have given 240 tents, but I don't see how they could have reached 250, unless they didn't actually count the tents. Hopefully they aren't intentionally exaggerating.