Thinking global, living local: Voices in a globalized world

Three faces of the Occupy Wall Street movement

Written by on . Published in The greater we

As the Occupy Wall Street movement called for worldwide protests demanding more social equality to mark Labor Day, Future Challenges spoke with three prominent members of the anti-greed movement that rose out of New York last year.

First meet Sofia Gallisá Muriente. She helps run the new Spanish-language Occupy Wall Street newspaper IndigNación, which recently launched online and will soon publish a print edition. Muriente says the publication is meant to “create a forum” for Spanish-speakers involved with social movements in the US and throughout Latin America to share their experiences and strategize.

“We hope that IndigNación becomes a space for fostering that conversation,” she says, “because we see that there is a beautiful, diverse community of Latinos who’ve been involved with Occupy so far and wouldn’t have necessarily come together under other circumstances.”

The Puerto Rican New Yorker explains what the movement means to her:

Now meet Joshua Boss of Global Revolution.tv, a media platform for citizen journalists widely used by the Occupy movement. Boss remembers his first involvement vividly, describing a Brooklyn march broken up by the police that he took part in while holding a camera that was streaming the footage live to the Internet.”I broke into a sprint up the platform” as “our viewer count was sky rocketing,” he wrote in an e-mail interview, adding, “WE were breaking news.  WE had the scoop.  All [mainstream news organizations] broadcast on very basic gear, thoughtfully hacked together.  Mainstream Media was there but couldn’t broadcast. The game changed for me that day.  Citizen journalism mattered.”

Boss lists a few reasons why the Occupy Wall Street movement might not be what you think it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7onYi_vCfc&feature=player_embedded

Now meet Kyle Cobey, who took part in Occupy Wall Street from the day one and is hard at work on his “Occupy Wall Street Cookbook,” which aims to make healthy, socially-responsible eating affordable. The book came out of his leading role in managing the food situation at Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street held its landmark demonstrations last year.

Cobey sees the movement as a rallying call for disaffected youth the world over:

 

 

Tags:

Kristin Deasy Twitter: kristindeasy

Kristin Deasy is a blogger with Future Challenges. Before joining the Future Challenges team, she worked as an international correspondent for the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US-funded organization that broadcasts into countries that lack a fully free press. Her work has also appeared in World Affairs magazine, the Prague Post, the European online magazine Cafe Babel, and others. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.