O C C U P Y Suddenly the word ‘Occupy’ occupies our mind space. It has entered our lexicon and everyday use. From occupy Tahrir to occupy Wall Street it has occupied all kinds of space. Occupy generally meant to fill or take up a space or time extended to, reside or have ones place of business in a building. Today occupy is a movement. A symbol of protest and more. My son. Abhishek , has extended it to a daily use. He shifts room to occupy and symbolically tunes the environ to signify his occupation. The lights will be made much brighter. Ac will be switched on , irrespective of the climate and the part of the year you are in. The TV channel will be changed. The Cushions and Pillows will be made to stand in alert position. The decibel of music or any audio at its highest peak. The Western world is recently laying a claim to the word with Occupy Wall Street but it started with the Arab Spring. The Occupy movement inspired by the Arab Spring and the Portuguese and Spanish Indignants movement in the Iberian Peninsula. The movement commonly uses the slogan to Occupy and organizes through websites such as Occupy Together. According to The Washington Post, the movement, which has been described as a democratic awakening by Cornel West, is difficult to distill to a few demands. The Arab Spring is a term for the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests both non-violent and violent, riots, and civil wars in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010. By December 2013, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco , Sudan and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara, and the Palestinian territories. The protests have shared some techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the effective use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Many Arab Spring demonstrations have been met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators. These attacks have been answered with violence from protestors in some cases. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world has been Ash-sha`b yurid isqat an-nizam ,the people want to bring down the regime. Activists have used web technologies and social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup to coordinate events. Indymedia helped the movement with communications, saying there had been conference calls on Skype with participants from up to 80 locations. Interactive live streams of events by independent journalists were used to augment Mainstream media coverage. The progressive provider May First/People Link offered cost-free memberships for dozens of groups, including groups in Iran and Germany, to host websites, emails, and email lists securely. The movement went further to attempt to promote its causes through multi-media and art, which has been gathered and archived by institutions such as the National Museum of American History and New York Historical Society. The aim of much of the art produced was to visually impact the mainstream through imagery to attempt to create solidarity and unity among the 99%. The movement has been described as having an overriding commitment to Participatory democracy. Much of the movements democratic process occurs in working groups, where any protester is able to have their say. Decisions are made using the consensus model of direct democracy. This often features the use of hand signals to increase participation and operating with discussion facilitators rather than leaders – a system that can be traced in part participatory democracy in ancient Athens. The occupy movement began with a commitment to Non-Violence . My friend, Sanjay Nigam ,points out direct links to the writings of nonviolent theorist Dr. Gene Sharp whose work was reported to have influenced nonviolent struggle movements in Serbia and the Arab Spring. Sharp himself warned that many of the tactics the movement were employing were not effective. In an Al Jazeera interview he said, The [Occupy] protesters don’t have a clear objective, something they can actually achieve. If they think they will change the economic system by simply staying in a particular location, then they are likely to be very disappointed. Protest alone accomplishes very little. In late May 2011, sociologist Manuel Castells congratulated Spanish occupiers for the fact that not a single violent incident had been reported after 11 days of camping all over Spain. Castells said that nonviolence was of fundamental importance, and was echoed by various other sociologists and social historians including Lester Kurtz, Prof. Maurice Isserman and Prof. Tom Juravich. Juravich and others have however said that conflict can be important in attracting attention, with much to be gained if occupiers are seen as victims of the violence, providing occupiers keep their own aggression strictly within limits. Since December 2010, the Occupy movement has spread to over 80 countries and 2,700 towns and cities, including cities in India. The movement has generated reactions from the media, the general public, the government, and from international bodies. _________________________________ Image : Six Possibilities of Occupying a Given Space, Àngels Ribé. 1975. Àngels Ribé was born in Barcelona in 1943. She is considered one of the most important Catalan conceptual artists of the 70s, with a strong international presence. Ribé moved from Barcelona to Paris in 1966, and in 1969 began creating sculpture and installations, later actions and performances, working primarily with space and the body. Ribes work, contextualized in the conceptual art of the late 60s and 70s, utilized nontraditional material, which she gradually discarded to concentrate on the ephemeral—light and shadow—and the location of the body in space. _______________________________ Tags: #Occupy #ArabSpring #ÀngelsRibé #DrGeneSharp #AlokeKumar #AKThisandThat
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 03:47:09 +0000
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