What does it mean to be a part of Occupy Wall Street? For me, the meaning has changed and shifted; it changes and shifts every day. Today: co-editing a press statement about ‘Occupy our Dreams’ on Google Docs with people I have never met. Yesterday: teaching my college students about the consensus method and how our classroom would be different if it were run that way; talking about what horizontal power looks like; and then later, in bed, watching the live stream of Occupy Oakland shutting down the ports.

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 […]

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, […]

Another sunny Darwin day, no clouds, but the humidity is way up there. We got to parliament house just after 3pm, covered in a thin film of sweat. A scattering of people sat around on the lush green grass house, bathing in the shade provided by the Ceauşescu-like structure that is Parliament House (known by […]

Around a thousand people converged on Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD for the Occupy Sydney protest on Saturday October 15. Martin Place is home to the Reserve Bank of Australia, across the road from the state Parliament and nearby are many major banks and corporate headquarters. Protesters spoke out against corporate greed and called for […]

The Melbourne City Square was once a public space before the various private bars and hotels and restaurants that now dominate the area claimed it for their own. In that respect, it provided a fitting venue for Occupy Melbourne to reclaim. By my count, there were about a thousand people in the square today: a […]

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 […]