Occupied

A few weeks ago I started receiving e-mails from organizations who were sponsoring a protest to occupy Wall Street. I deleted these e-mails without paying much attention to them. Don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of the stock market or the financial speculation industry that seems to have eaten the US economy, and I remember how they helped to crash our economy. But I didn't think these protests sounded as if they'd been planned very well, and I couldn't imagine them being effective.

I seem to have been very wrong.

Now, the mainstream and alternative news (and my inbox) seem to be full of news of a movement that has spread across the US in the past two or three weeks. Busy grad student that I am, I am still trying to sort through all of this stuff and make sense of it.

Here is what I've figured out so far.

First, the feminist peace group Code Pink is leading an effort to make sure the demonstrations are inclusive and have a feminist perspective. See this great post on AlterNet by Melanie Butler:

If Week I of Occupy Wall Street was about surviving, Week II has been about finding our voices. This protest is about the 99 percent of people in America who have been on the short end of the economic stick, but it appears the media believes it's 90 percent made up of men. Some of the organizing and facilitation processes we've developed to make our movement inclusive and participatory have proven not to be enough, and we are constantly adapting and regrouping to ensure that everyone's voice in this broad and vibrant coalition is heard.

Via an e-mail from Code Pink, I also found out about Occupy Together. Their Web site says that they're "an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.," and they also have a Facebook page.

Thanks to a link shared by a friend on Facebook, I found out that there is a local Occupy OKC group, which as a Facebook page and a Web site. Their next "general assembly" is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. at Kerr Park in downtown OKC. I'm not sure I'll be able to make this, but it looks interesting.