The next major action planned by Occupy Wall Street is a nationwide general strike set for May 1, and to promote it they've started producing a lot of great-looking works of propaganda that largely downplays the involvement of Occupy itself. The videos, posters, and paintings promoting the strike that actually mention Occupy tend to place it in the background rather than as the central component. Organizers say they're aiming a much larger audience than the folks who camped or protested in city squares last fall. "A general strike really needs to be general," organizer Joe Sharkey said. "May Day is a traditional day for workers movements and revolution, so I think that’s the main emphasis. It’s to broaden the appeal and not just attach it to Occupy. People have preconceived notions of what occupy is or isn’t."
The ambitious action, which calls for people to skip work, school, chores, shopping, and basically everything else, coincides with International Workers Day (also known as May Day), which celebrates the labor movement on the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago during which police opened fire on striking workers. There are usually a lot of protests and marches on May 1, but the nationwide general strike is an Occupy concept, first suggested by Occupy Los Angeles last November and organized nationally through sites such as InterOccupy, which arranges conference calls between Occupy organizers in various cities. Now a Facebook page for the strike has 11,600 followers last we checked, and the hashtag #M1GS has begun cropping up in strike-related tweets. Many of those tweets share posters and artwork that targets specific demographics, rather than simply promoting Occupy.
Original Article
Source: the atlantic wire
Author: Adam Martin
No comments:
Post a Comment