Occupy Wall Street is coming to the Battlefords in the form of Occupy the Battlefords Oct. 15 between 10 a.m. and 12 at Territorial Mall.
The movement, which began as anti-corporate demonstrations in New York Sept. 17, has since spread to over 1,500 cities and towns around the world, despite often brutal police action against demonstrators - 700 demonstrators were arrested in a single day in New York, and countless peaceful protestors have been arrested, pepper-sprayed, or otherwise interfered with by police.
The movement has also garnered support from a wide coalition, including politicians, blue-collar workers, war veterans and even Egyptians in Tahrir Square. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek recently spoke in New York and Cornel West, a Princeton professor and political activist, also spoke at the Chicago event. Roseanne Barr also expressed support for the movement within days of it starting.
An exhaustive list of the protest's grievances is impossible to compile, but it includes the ongoing corporate domination of media, food and energy production, the Wall Street bailouts and the foreclosures in the United States that put six million people out of their homes. As the movement is leaderless by design, consensus is released slowly after a democratic decision-making process. The minutes from the general assemblies of each occupy movement are publicly available on their websites.
The movement's goals are ambitious and vague. There are no leaders or organizational structures and for the last month has existed as a way for the "other 99 per cent," the poorest 99 per cent of the world, to express anger at many of the problems the world has been facing because of the corporatization of our culture.
For more information about sign-making, or the Oct. 15 protests, contact Safira Lachapelle at 445 1588 or at safira.lachapelle@gmail.com. For more information on the Occupy Wall Street Movement, visit www.occupywallst.org
