When I ran away from activism to be a writer about ten years ago, I did so with a degree of guilt. I was in need of consolation, and the imagination has always been my strongest fortress, my best escape. I felt exhausted by the anti-globalisation and squatting movements I was intensely involved in, bruised by the mode of pressing bodies against barricades, fighting for inches of territory.

If it achieves nothing else, by locking out all its staff, Qantas has shown why the Occupy movement matters. Naturally, the usual performing seals will bark and clap their fins in the Murdoch press about how Alan Joyce had no option. He had to crush the union, you see – it’s that old Vietnam logic […]

Broadway is always busy. On Columbus Day weekend it’s just nuts. Cars, cabs, tour buses choke the street. The shops are awash with people chasing Halloween costumes, bargains, fake Ray Bans, I heart NY souvenirs. I’m working my way through the crowds to the Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park. New York is well […]

Occupy Australia: where to from here? Mike Stuchbery versus Rjurik Davidson Mike Stuchbery Following forceful evictions from both City Square and Martin Place, the Occupy movement in Australia is at a crossroads. With vision of heavy-handed police tactics across news media and Facebook, many are flocking to the General Assemblies and rallies held in both […]

As one of the judges for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards for this year, I’ve been surprised in the past 24 hours to hear myself referred to as a ‘professional protester’ by the Lord Mayor – an ‘arrogant liar’ who had had their ‘little self-indulgent moment in the sunshine’ and ‘caused at least $15,000 damage’ to City Square. Because I have been active in Occupy Melbourne.

I got to Occupy Sydney at about 8pm on Monday night and stayed for about an hour and a half. I jotted down some things on a pad of post-its, and took a few photos. I went feeling sceptical about it, and didn’t leave feeling particularly reassured. When I was there, there were about five […]

In the past few weeks friends and family from around the country have asked me, with a deep urgency in their tone: ‘What is it like to be there? What does it feel like? How would you describe it?’ These questions throw me because, like any project of describing life as it happens around you, […]

I first went down to Occupy Wall Street last Sunday, almost a week after it had started. I didn’t go down before because I, like many of my other brown friends, was wary of what we had heard or just intuited that it was mostly a young, white male scene. When I asked friends about […]