Occupy 2.0

What?! Haha, no really, stop joking...Wait, are you serious?

from https://www.abillionpeople.org/

by AdBusters

Alright you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Take Two.

Ten years after Occupy Wall Street one thing has become painfully clear: the people in charge of the global system have run it aground.

It’s time for another show of righteous discontent.

But this time will be a little different. Instead of marching in the streets and occupying parks, we’re calling for a Worldwide General Strike — A Day of Rage Against World Leaders.

On September 17th, everything simply … stops. Kids don’t go to school. Parents don’t go to work. We don’t drive our cars. We don’t go out to the shops.

We bring the world to a standstill.

And then, as revolutionary promise hangs in the air, we deliver an ultimatum to our leaders:


Print version


Between now and then, we send this message to every politician, every journalist, every pundit . . . every CEO, artist and intellectual luminary. We blast it across the internet for all to read.

We print out multiple copies and stick them up all over our cities . . . on every lamppost, bank window, storefront and government-office door.

Then, at COP26 in Glasgow this November, if our leaders refuse to declare a Code-Red Emergency and make urgently needed cuts to emissions, We the People of the world will rise up and bring their doomsday machine to a sudden sputtering halt.

And out of its smoking corpse, we’ll rise up and build anew.


The Third Force

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So much has been written about occupy: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/search?query=occupy

I think crimethinc are the ones who have written the most about occupy: https://crimethinc.com/search?q=occupy

After so many iterations of occupy in different places, including occupy ICE:

What does it even mean to make this call in 2021?

After the magnitude and intensity of last year's uprisings (and even the ones in 2019), in USA and around the world, and the lessons learned from that.

This can be no other than a pacification attempt, an escape valve, an effort to co-opt the waning energy of last year's revolt, channeling the dupes into electoral favor, and burning out the rest. Some people are still recovering from the burnout and consequences of the previous occupy iterations, and inaugural protests, summit-hopping, etc.

"Then, at COP26 in Glasgow this November, if our leaders refuse to declare a Code-Red Emergency and make urgently needed cuts to emissions, We the People of the world will rise up and bring their doomsday machine to a sudden sputtering halt."

An Extinction Rebellion type call for the State to declare one more state of emergency? On top of the pandemic, forest fires, hurricanes (speaking of hurricanes and déjà vu https://twitter.com/scott_crow/status/1432009773046767622) ? I know these people are liberals, but they seem to have a worse grip on things than others, no hand on the pulse. Have they been hiding under a rock since 2010? Is this going to be a dressed re-enactment? Was this call written by Al Gore in 2006?

it's like old movie franchises, just keep throwing a fistful of the same old shit at the wall... still sticky?! no, of course not. but they'll try because they have no better ideas.

i mean sooner or later, climate change related labour/social disruptions are going to become a regular occurrence everywhere anyway, either planned or otherwise. technically, that's what the gilet jaunes were so it's already a thing. lots of other examples too!

also, afraid i have to say that it's strange to me to assert that anyone's "still recovering from the burnout and consequences of the previous occupy iterations, and inaugural protests, summit-hopping, etc.". i'm not disputing that it might be true that some people are "still recovering" but the tone of this remark comes across a bit ... out of touch with the general seriousness of the situation.

if you 're still too fucked up and dysfunctional from stuff that happened a decade ago, bad news! there will be no luxury of decades to rest and recuperate for most of us. hey, remember when you could still move to a small town and ignore the world burning for the rest of your life in relative peace? gen X says "what?" like half the songs they wrote were about this bullshit. LUCKY YOU assholes...

"Moving to a small town" ain't as easy or dreamy as you might think. It's dealing with intense isolation 24/7. If you didn't get to the level of being a social winner, i.e. having kids, a nice house and a steady job with good paycheck you're pretty likely to live in the shadow of those privileged ones who did, as they'll never give a fuck about you, if you don't become their village idiot at best or the local pedo at worst. Let's say humans are a messed up species and when living in enclosed bubbles they become much worse.

... yeah ok? i've already lived in small towns before. didn't say it was dreamy or easy.

the point being made is about the word "burnout" being used to camouflage something more grim.

Hey, it's 23:23 here. don't know what's up with 8:19.
Responding to:
"but the tone of this remark comes across a bit ... out of touch with the general seriousness of the situation."
"the point being made is about the word "burnout" being used to camouflage something more grim."

Something more grim indeed, but also maybe not what you're thinking. What I was thinking of is of 3 people's experiences in particular, anecdotal and not representative, but of course what will be on my mind is what I know: ptsd and bad backs from prolonged living in tents in the streets under bad conditions, a case of rape (by people who got inside the tents at night), a case of beating up to get them evicted, a case of a cop cracking a skull, and other things. Sure, they don't regret the decision of going to occupy. What else are you to do as a naive youth with illusions that you will be part The Revolution? But what occurs to me is that those "tactics" (performative conspicuous urban camping?) are just a way to wear yourself down. People overstayed their welcome in the tents for way too long, past harsh winters and waning support. At least people who opt for homelessness as lifestyle like oogles, have a more practical approach to survival than the middle-class activists who opted for homelessness as activism on a whim. Not to mention the conflict occupy usually had with actual long-time homeless people, basically making it harder for them in many ways, beyond feel-good anecdotes of some shared pizza or any other whitewashing.

The general seriousness of the situation does not make the "tactic" more effective. The embarrassing aspects of Occupy were already repeated and put on display in CHAZ/CHOP.
Instead of that (performative conspicuous camping in cities, plazas), a tad better and more useful is more lowkey and consistently growing and sharing food (not centered around some quick event with fast pacing to wear you out), ways to catch water, generate power, different forms mutual aid thing we've been hearing so much about, are responses that seem more in touch with the situation. It'd be interesting to see more experimentation with yet unseen more ambitious forms of sabotage. What can we learn from blockades against pipelines and logging? Regardless, we'll also see more wild riots with looting and fires as we saw last year, as well as peaceful marches, same things on repeat on and on.

some of this is fair enough, I was a penniless hobo back then but should I start listing horrifying anecdotes too?

seem to recall a bunch of ppl getting whiplash from trying to live on the streets for the first time, not sure what they were expecting tho? to them we say - welcome to the margins of society if you weren't already acquainted with the feeling, austerity means new homeless kids and you're it! Overdoses, random violence, extreme mental health cases just wandering aimlessly through the winter night with no shoes... didn't matter if we kept replacing the shoes!

what i'm thinking is that as grim as the things you described are, if we're talking about "social war" and collapse and "The Rev", we would be talking about thousands of times worse, wouldn't we?

anyway, i'm certainly not defending occupy as a liberal activist tactic that "works". jfc ... hope that much is obvious?

to your last point, yes! that sounds much smarter than waiting around in the middle of downtown to get bootfucked by the cops or random fascists or whatever. i hope many more folks draw similar conclusions!

Anarchy is done best either gradually or as a contextual act of insurrection. An anti-loyalist non voice exist strategy need not be messy. All this revolution and social war crap is essentially a refreshing of the turd that is revolution and the whole deep meme of it going back to 1789. Proudhon and Stirner both rejected it in their own ways. Anyone serious(and joking) about anarchy should do the same.

Anarchy is about radical egregore's breaking off from society, it is not an attempt to restructure society something that ALWAYS brings about complications.

hey ziggy, don't require your broken record obviously. you've said all this before, you know we don't like each other AND your comment isn't even contrary to anything I said ... even 10 years ago I would have found you to be saying nothing particularly insightful. just another armchair opinion from the peanut gallery

Did I just detect a whining tone in xsome of the comments here?
Embrace the challenge of precarious existence or observe silence.

What's dumber than powerless protests?

Powerless protests 10 years later, with ULTIMATUMS!

why do you even host this liberal bullshit, I thought we were anarchists

Lil Nas X drops his new album September 17th. Don't get all flustered about striking or whatever, just put this on repeat and chill.

For what it’s worth, most anarchists in the US didn’t take Adbuster’s 2011 Occupy Wall Street call seriously either. It took a few days/weeks for anarchists in various cities to realize something profound and full of possibilities was uncovering itself- a generalized discontentment, and willingness to gather and act (something far less common then). And different anarchists in different cities participated in different ways- experiencing euphoria and frustration and everything in between. All this to say, not that 2021 occupy will be anything but dumb, but that sometimes things might surprise us, and it’s okay to be surprised.

do i get a discount on Adbuster shoes for going? if not i’m out

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