Activism

Sitting in a wheel chair outside City Hall during a recent Occupy Los Angeles rally, 78-year-old Anastasia Stewart pumped her handmade sign in the air. She said, “We’ve become ‘of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations,’ instead of ‘of the people, for the people, by the people.’”

Beginning on September 17th with Occupy Wall Street, a new and dynamic social movement has arrived and is capturing the imagination of millions of people in towns and cities around the world. This is real.

In Vermont last Sunday, more than 100 people gathered in Burlington as part of the Occupy Wall Street political uprising, expressing their outrage about economic inequality and the excesses of banks and other economic interests.

More than demanding any particular policy proposal, the occupation is reminding Wall Street what real democracy looks like: a discussion among people, not a contest of money.

Through a journey spanning Sydney, Havana, Caracas and Chicago, sociologist and author Sujatha Fernandes explores the narrations of hip hop culture across the globe in her new book, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation.

What is occurring on Wall Street right now is truly remarkable. For over 10 days, in the sanctum of the great cathedral of global capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.