"The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" cried voices across Zuccotti Park on Wednesday night as 30 people sat with their arms interlocked, surrounded by cameras and sympathetic onlookers. NYPD officers were positioned some distance away at the concrete barricades that had begun surrounding the park. Confronting the sit-in with mock dispersal orders were Sam Corbin and Logan Price, OWS Direct Action trainers tasked with helping to prepare participants for the People's Wall, a nonviolent civil disobedience action in the Financial District planned for the morning of Monday, September 17.
September 17 (S17) is of course the one-year anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, a reclaiming of public space that galvanized the political imagination of the country and the world with its proclaimed opposition between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, its prefigurative emphasis on horizontality and mutual aid, and its linking of grievances from climate change to Stop and Frisk to predatory debt. All summer, OWS organizers have poured their energy into preparing for a three-day convergence of "education, celebration and resistance" to mark the anniversary — which will include assemblies, trainings, a concert, and a day of direct actions including the People's Wall, 99 Revolutions and the eco-themed Storm Wall Street. At the same time, those of us working to organize it are keeping our eyes on the prize of long-term movement building for campaigns like the fight against the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and Strike Debt, an effort to organize a mass upsurge of debt resistance.
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