Gould-Wartofsky - The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gould-Wartofsky, Michael A.

The occupiers : the making of the 99 percent movement / Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780199313914 (hardback)

eISBN 9780199313938

1. Occupy Wall Street (Movement) 2. Occupy movementUnited States. 3. Protest movementsUnited StatesHistory. 4. Political participationUnited StatesHistory. 5. Income distributionUnited States. 6. EqualityUnited States. I. Title.

HN59.2.G69 2015

303.4840973dc23

2014017159

To my mother and to the memory of my father.

Allow us to introduce ourselves: We are the 99 Percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if were working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 Percent.

Introduction to The 99 Percent Project

That night, the skies opened up over Lower Manhattan, letting loose dramatic claps of thunder and a driving rain. By the time I made it downtown on October 13, little was left of the elaborate infrastructure of Occupy Wall Street. To be sure, the Media Center was still aglow with the blue light of laptops, the sanitation station filled to overflowing. Yet the contents of the Peoples Library were already on their way to a safe house across the Hudson River, and those of the Peoples Kitchen had been relocated to a church property on the other side of the East River. After twenty-seven days of occupation, the occupiers were set to be evicted from Zuccotti Park, the privately owned public space a stones throw from the gates of Wall Street.