Regime Change in America

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(A1) Front Cover US.indd 2 12-03-16 3:24 PM

Janine Gordon

(B1) Intro.indd 4 12-03-16 3:08 PM

PLAYKILLCAP

OCCUPY MEDIA, MEGACORPS, CAMPUSES,

BANKS

MAY 18GLOBAL

#LAUGHRIOT

OCCUPYSQUADS

SWARM CHICAGO

AND RETAKE THE SQUARES

MOVE YOUR MONEY

OCCUPYYOURSELF

THESENSELESS BEAUTY OFREBELLION

(B1) Intro.indd 5 12-03-16 3:09 PM

No Demand Is Big Enough

We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on Earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street: No one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns. Ultimately, we are protesting not only on behalf of the 99% left behind but on behalf of the 1% as well. We have no enemies. We want everyone to wake up to the beauty of what we can create.

Charles Eisenstein

Celsa D

ockstader from Inside O

ut | Occupy Oakland

Looking out upon the withered American Dream, many of us feel a deep sense of betrayal. Unemployment, fi nancial insecurity, and lifelong enslavement to debt are just the tip of the iceberg. We don't want to merely fi x the growth machine and bring profi t and product to every corner of the earth. We want to fundamentally change the course of civilization. The American Dream betrayed even those who achieved it, lonely in their overtime careers and their McMansions, narcotized to the ongoing ruination of nature and culture but aching because of it, endlessly consuming and accumulating to quell the insistent voice: “I wasn't put here on Earth to sell product.” “I wasn't put here on Earth to increase market share.” “I wasn't put here on Earth to make numbers grow.”

(B1) Intro.indd 6 12-03-19 5:46 PM

We need to be on the move from target

to target, at least until we topple the

system. When we get that done we can

start on Plan C:

re-building local communities.

Celsa D

ockstader from Inside O

ut | Occupy Oakland

(B1) Intro.indd 7 12-03-16 3:09 PM

THE POWER OF AUTONOMOUS SPACES

Occupy catalyzed a global movement by creating autonomous spaces in hundreds of cities. This tactic of resistance was new to many North American activists, but it has a long history that hints at the movement’s next steps.

Christian Weber, Adoration, from the series Speak + Spell

THE POWER OFAUTONOMOUS SPACES

Occupy catalyzed a global movement by creating autonomous spaces in hundreds of cities. This tactic of resistance was new to many North American activists, but it has a long history that hints at the movement’s next steps.

Christian Weber, Adoration, from the seriesAdoration, from the seriesAdoration Speak + Spell

(C1) Versus.indd 10 12-03-16 4:07 PM

Perhaps the most notable example in history of autonomous spaces is the self-governing Paris Commune of 1871, which was forcibly broken up after only a few months. In the Paris of 1968 a section of the city was oc-cupied by students and renamed the Heroic Vietnam Quarter. A contem-porary example can be seen in the Chiapas region of Mexico – where the Zapatistas have established autono-mous communities, in turn acting as a continuous inspiration to activists across the world.

An important example of the use of autonomous space in Britain began in February 1992, when a group of gypsies decid-ed to pitch tents on the proposed site of a new motorway. They were soon joined by environmental activists. Together they remained there for the next ten months. When campaigners began making preparations for a similar initiative at another site in the south of England the government got scared and an-nounced that their planned road project there would not be go-ing ahead.

Compelled by that momentum, campaigners kept building the movement and organized protest camps elsewhere. Tacticians borrowed ideas from anti-logging activists in North America and Australia such as lock-ons, ecotage and tripods (three poles attached together with a person at the top), and fused them with homegrown tactics suggested by parts of the climb-ing community to stretch both the wits and the budgets of the authorities in their efforts to remove them. Due to the height-ened publicity and expense, the roads project became unten-able. In 1996 the government decided to abandon its plans and ax plans for 77 new roads. The protesters’ efforts had paid off. Once again a feature of this movement was the autonomous spaces of the protest camps.

For two months in 1871, the working classes of Paris seized the city and established the Paris Commune.

(C1) Versus.indd 11 12-03-16 4:07 PM

Hot weather brings crowds to a swimming pool in Daying county of Suining.

Reuters

(C1) Versus.indd 18 12-03-16 4:08 PM

What does freedom of the individual mean in a country with 1.3 billion individuals? What does it mean to have human rights in a sea of humanity like that? Will China follow our model of democracy and adopt the kind of personal freedom agenda that we in the West have chased since the Enlightenment? And what about Planet Earth? What is a workable balance between collective stabil-ity and individual freedom in a world with seven billion and soon ten billion souls run-ning around looking for salvation?

Reuters

(C1) Versus.indd 19 12-03-16 4:08 PM

... Jammers, whatever we do this Spring,  let’s  float  like butterflies and sting like bees! Let’s bend the G8 and NATO to our will with shock tactics and audacious culture jams that capture the imagination of the world. We may be far closer to a Global Spring than any of us has so far dared to imagine …

for the wild,

Culture Jammers HQ

Nick Whalen, nickwhalen.com

(E1) Occupy Harvard.indd 10 12-03-16 3:15 PM

Nick Whalen, nickwhalen.com

(E1) Occupy Harvard.indd 11 12-03-20 11:18 AM

from Touching 1000 People, Vancouver, 2003 by Diane BorsatoPhoto by Jessie Birch and Kim Munro for Recorder

(G1) Swarm.indd 6 12-03-16 3:16 PM

“A few people start breaking their old patterns, embracing what they love

(and in the process discovering what they hate), daydreaming, questioning,

rebelling. What happens naturally then, according to the revolutionary past, is a groundswell of support for this new

way of being, with more and more people empowered to perform new

gestures ‘unencumbered by history.’”

Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam

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(G1) Swarm.indd 7 12-03-20 12:27 PM

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MAY 18

(H1) Back Cover.indd 2 12-03-16 2:25 PM

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