Budget wars, activism, uprising, dissent and general rabble-rousing.
In late December, more than a half-dozen major museums and organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Historical Society, announced they would begin collecting materials produced by the Occupy movement.
The timing seemed odd. Here was a movement in its infancy—not yet four months old—that is still very much ongoing. For example, sixty-eight people were just arrested in Zuccotti Park during a New Year’s protest.
Naturally, the desire to preserve Occupy makes sense. The camps were temporary and any items left from their time are now precious relics any history enthusiast would be eager to examine. But the rush to archive, preserve and endlessly study the Occupy Wall Street movement perhaps also reflects America’s thirst for a grassroots protest, and the belief that any such movement is, by its very nature, extremely temporary.
NYU and Columbia University have both announced they will offer courses on the nascent movement.
Offered by [Columbia’s] Anthropology Department, the course [pdf], called “Occupy the Field,” will offer “training in ethnographic research methods alongside a critical exploration of the conjunctural issues in the Occupy movement: Wall Street, finance capital, and inequality; political strategies, property and public space, and the question of anarchy; and genealogies of the contemporary moment in global social movements.”
Time reports:
[NYU’s] “Cultures and Economies: Why Occupy Wall Street?” lists goals as wide-ranging and frenetic as the protests themselves. According to the class description, students will focus on “economic inequality and financial greed” around the globe. Alright, that’s a honed-in goal —but they’ll examine those in the context of “race, class, gender, sexuality, region, religion and other factors.” It’s a mission statement as diverse as the demands of the actual protesters.
The fact that major education institutions are now hurrying to tailor their curriculum to accommodate an Occupy world is remarkable. Here are universities that normally study protest movements as archaic events — something poor people of color did way back in the day. Once there was a lady named Rosa, and so on.
It’s curious to witness the archival process of a movement that may be merely the opening salvo of a great cultural shift in America. The process of collecting the scraps of Liberty Park has a sense of finality to it. Once there was something called Occupy…
The desire to dissect OWS may reflect the modern era in which everything and all things are consumed at a frantic pace. Sure, Occupy just got off the ground, and is constantly evolving, but the want for information about the movement is overwhelming. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the archiving Occupy might also be a byproduct of Americans’ limited ability to imagine the possibilities of a serious protest movement.
No one, including those of us who have been following Occupy since its first day, truly understands its power. As such, every day of Occupy seems like it might be the last day, which has led countless publications to tirelessly declare the End Of Occupy seemingly every day since September 17.
After all, major protest movements happen in Tunisia, or Egypt or Libya, but not in America. Whatever minor blip occurred in some parks has come and gone and now it’s time to reflect on what the hell happened. That reflection, by the way, is a great thing, and universities and museums should be applauded for recognizing the majorness of OWS.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Generation Meme handles an ongoing protest movement of Occupy’s magnitude. Barely four months in, Occupy is beginning to lose its shininess and the Smithsonian is hurrying after it with a broom and evidence bag. At least OWS has the luxury of being a protest movement in America, so by its very nature, every action is new and thrilling because it’s someone doing something instead of sitting on the couch.
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I have had my PhD students analyze the posts here and it is a diagnosis of childhood issues that fuel the sickness of the poster with the most posts. Daddie did not let it play with mommie enough.
Never 2 old or 2 dumb 2 get your head screwed on right ~ seek help!
Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling
By CATHERINE RAMPELL Published: May 18, 2011
The individual stories are familiar....
Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years....What's more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is "worth it" after all.
....Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. "It's more about luck than anything else."
....Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring.....That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007....
Meanwhile, college graduates are having trouble paying off student loan debt, which is at a median of $20,000 for graduates of classes 2006 to 2010.
.....Mr. Bishop, the Pittsburgh graduate, said...he hopes to be in publishing or writing....adding that right now his student loan debt was over $70,000....
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Question for the many Mr, Bishops: IF you had to borrow a huge part of your college costs, why didn't you pick a field with very high probability of employment with good pay? Didn't you know several years ago that "publishing or writing" were dying fields?
Has Zero, the most `intellectual', smartest of smart POTUS solved any problems? I report, you decide:
It's the Math, Stupid!: Seven Devastating Facts About 2012
by Wynton Hall
As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:
Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.
Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.
Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.
These are not partisan jabs, manufactured statistics, or ideological swipes. These are mathematical facts....
Occupy looks like a durable good!
Scanned thru a few Occupy sites this AM and I see a decentralized infrastructure building. This suggests to me that the action will continue and build. Take a look at:
Interoccupy -- linking strategy and tactics across the country: http://interoccupy.org/
A wiki for researching the Occupy Movement: http://occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/
a media archive http://occupyarchive.org/
My local Occupy web site for Occupy Santa Rosa http://www.occupysantarosa.org/
by: 2HAPPY at 01/02/2012 @ 10:01am...
--taught to actually solve problems, get things done--
ROTFALOL... and you voted for BUSH?;^)
The BS meter is pegged again, 2H...
davej1s at 01/02/2012 @ 9:44am...
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