direct democracy | LOUDCANARY

In many ways, the core of the Occupy Wall St. movement’s impact in the U.S. has been to expose how corrupt our systems of governance really are, and to show in action what (direct) democracy, actually looks like. We live in an age of perverse language, when “democracy” and “freedom” are exported by drones, or at gunpoint, and where anarchism — democracy without government — is viewed by many as tantamount to terrorism.

With those specific things in mind, here is a cluster of material related to the underlying theory and evolving practice of the Occupy movement, highlighting adaptive and prefigurative organizing successes and casting an eye towards 2012.

text and photos by Brian Awehali

“The biggest difference I see between China and the US is that in China, our government owns the corporations and in the US, the corporations own your government.”

–Chinese people’s historian Liao Yiwu (廖亦武), July, 2010

On September 27th, the Occupy Wall Street rebellion was clearly gathering momentum. The NYPD’s macing of several peaceful protesters the previous weekend, and their arrest of roughly 80 demonstrators in the following days served primarily to spark more coverage, outrage and broad-based support for the movement. Donations were pouring in, a group of hundreds was turning into thousands in lower Manhattan, and similar occupations were blooming in dozens of other U.S. cities.

In the first days of the occupation, most corporate media reporters approached the protesters as would any good B-movie alien delegation: “Take us to your leader,” they demanded. Confronted with a decentralized organizing culture, they furrowed their brows, demanded demands, preferably in sound bite form, and generally derided protesters for being young, unrealistic, weird-looking, and/or unhygienic.