OFS | Organization for a Free Society

How Do We Know OWS Is Winning? Elites Are Desperate to Suppress It

Yotam Marom — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:06:55 +0000

We are building a global movement, and elites are beginning to mobilize the incredible power at their disposal to do it whatever damage they can – media and scholarship to discredit us, laws and regulations to constrain us and sheer violence to repress us. Read more →

Liberating the Impossible

Yotam Marom — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:49:29 +0000

We need institutions truly capable of meeting peoples’ needs – we need health clinics and social workers, democratic schools and worker cooperatives, neighborhood assemblies and reclaimed homes. We need them on a large scale, and we need to defend them from the attacks of the status quo. We need to take space not symbolically, but for keeps. Read more →

Whose Elections? Our Elections

Benjamin Case — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:40:40 +0000

But we are smart and we are strategic. We recognize that real (as opposed to rhetorical) reform to these systems can make life materially better for millions of struggling people in our country, as well as make it easier for us as revolutionaries to push for deeper change. Read more →

Not Just a Protest, But a Little Utopia

Benjamin Case — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:49:33 +0000

By now OWS has been featured on the news all around the world, and there is no shortage of analysis regarding its potential political impact. But the internal organization, structure and functioning of the occupations are at least as noteworthy. Read more →

The Impact of Occupy Wall Street: Some Early Indicators

Kevin Young — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:13:21 +0000

A quote well-known among activists, variously attributed to Gandhi or US labor leader Nicholas Klein, says that “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” In the space of just the past several… Read more

We Are the 99%, too: Creating a Feminist Space Within Occupy Wall Street

Angi Becker Stevens — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:09:12 +0000

This is not about—as many within the movement fear—just trying to piggy-back a bunch of unrelated “social issues” onto a movement for economic justice. It’s about recognizing that all of the various forms of oppression in our society are so interwoven that it would be impossible to truly fight one without fighting the others. Read more →

Moving to Action

Daniel Roth — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:05:25 +0000

Our analysis of the world right now creates a web with the issues that we face. Our vision for a better world touches on all the spheres that we can see. Here, I want to take moment to delve deeper into our strategy and organize types of institutions, so that we can begin to move ourselves toward action. Read more →

Occupy Wall Street Protests March on Midtown, and the World

Benjamin Case — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:00:07 +0000

Activists from the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City flooded Times Square on Saturday as part of a global day of action, with protesters packing the sidewalks and some streets as far as the eye could see in every direction, centered on the plaza where the famous ball drops on New Year's Eve. Read more →

We Are Winning – What Do We Want?

Yotam Marom — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:10:27 +0000

Make no mistake about it, we are not aimless; we simply speak a different language – a language of mutual respect, participation, self-management, and action. We make our demands in this language that screams that we are here for the long-run, that our goal is not merely reform, that our vision is deep and radical, that we will not be bought off or co-opted, and that we are prepared to struggle in order to win not only those gains we can pronounce now but also those we can’t even fully articulate yet. Read more →

A Brief Analysis from a Wall Street Occupier

Yotam Marom — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:05:38 +0000

The occupation of Wall Street is now in its third week. Thousands of people have worked and fought for it, have given it their time, their bodies, their ideas, their blood. People have used their bodies as shields, sent letters of solidarity, marched, slept out, donated, tweeted, and more. There are thousands more still who have not been with us, whether because of geographical reasons or because they are busy struggling elsewhere. Read more →