Politics and Social Movements

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.

For about a year I've been predicting that we'll see a mass movement to shut down power plants that rivals or beats the size of the US civil rights movement.

(Of course this movement won't be limited to the US.)

Over the past three years we have seen 50%, 100% or more increases in the price of energy, food, and most major commodities. What impact will this have on future social movements?

Already we've seen a wave of Arab revolutions sparked by increased food prices.

I believe that the number and size of the price shocks will increase for the next fifty years due to resource scarcity and growing demand.