Comments on: Occupy this space

By: Z

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:55:43 +0000

@Truffula, yes!

Promoting the discussion on this some of my students had:
http://profacero.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/occupying-portuguese/

By: truffula

truffula — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:48:44 +0000

IMHO, faculty need to get out of our offices and into the campus square with our students. We share a common cause and could do a lot of good work together. Students at my public university get this and the the rhetoric of our Occupy is all about solidarity. Students get it that growth on the backs of overworked and underpaid adjuncts is not in their best interest. They get it that year upon year without raises but with unfunded mandates demoralizes both faculty and staff and thus affects their education. They get it that real estate development deals are as much about presidential resume building as they are about creating instructional space. They get it that soda vendors have more pull than students when it comes to campus sustainability goals.

Our students are smart and they are paying attention. They are young and their ability to argue their points is still developing but they see how their future debt is being invested and they are not satisfied. If faculty fail to stand with students we will loose the best allies we could ever have.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:58:54 +0000

I’m going to nominate us Boomers for the entitled generation. Free parental rides to college (and not just in the station wagon), relatively little (school year) actual hard-core employment, then pass along the world of student loans and real in-semester jobs to the next generation(s).

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:28:22 +0000

Understood. I was just amplifying your point when you called them “the so-called entitled generation.”

By: Wini

Wini — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:25:02 +0000

Clarification, I didn’t mean to uncritically repeat the “entitled” nature of the millenials. Just, that they are growing into their political voices at an important time. I think they have an extremely importent voice right now, and that listening to what they are saying about the world left to them has taught me a lot.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:18:11 +0000

Jeebus, Wini: that’s one impressive display of anti-Americanism right there! 24 resisting citizens–call out the SWAT team! The SWAT team costumes I’ve seen in several photos and videos from around the country are very striking. One gets the sense that local P.D.s have been waiting for a decade to use these shiny, expensive suits that were purchased in the first rush of post-9/11 panic & the first flush of Homeland Security $$$.

The Millennials are far from an entitled generation. It’s always bothered me that people describe them that way, when (after all) they’ve just been young. This is the generation that is devoted to volunteer work, and this is the generation that volunteered for military service in the past decade. I have former students who in their mid-20s have seen and experienced more of the harsh realitites of life than I ever have, or ever want to. My life has been so cosseted, cushioned, and sheltered by comparison. What was my big hardship? Maybe a diet heavy on the pasta and the beans & rice in grad school, and an un-air-conditioned apartment in Baltimore one summer, but that’s about it.

If there is an entitled generation, it’s my generation, Generation X. For us, “VC” meant not VietCong, but Venture Captial. I think our big contribution to American life is the dot-com boom and bust of the late 90s-early 2000s, and several memoirs inspired by marination in our parents’ divorces and/or substance abuse.

Then again, influence in American society is a numbers game. The boomers and the Millennials are just numerically and proportionally much larger generations–my generation was the baby bust, when elementary schools were being closed and Prop 13 out in California really got the de-funding of public education underway. So I am not surprised that an Occupation movement led by Millennials will go much farther than any activism led by my generation.

By: Wini

Wini — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:28:51 +0000

This weekend I realized how far the 1/99 percent has travelled when my father used it, correctly. My Republican Uncle ™ has even began to vocally challenge his party, and the Democrats, to a degree I have never heard before. He hates occupy, but actually, “gets their anger at the banks and government working together.”

But, I think the really exciting potential, for me, is the political mobilization of the millenials. It seems that a transition is happening (for some) from the so-called entitled generation into something new. Seeing those students pepper sprayed, still sitting there has shocked some of my students. For the most part, I have been drawn into the movement’s growing power among the young ‘uns. The complaints about student loans at first sounded greedy, but the more sustained the argument, the more I’ve been intrigued by the underlying messages about tuition and the economy.

In addition, it is drawing important attention to the militaritarization of our police forces. I witnessed the following: 2 dozen marchers circling San francisco’s shopping district on black Friday, yelling at people to stop shopping. (or, protesting Christmas, more or less) Accompanying this was a dozen, stuffed police cars following them, and SWAT teams in the roofs of three buildings, particularily ominous over the hundreds of people gawking at the ice

By: Z

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:39:47 +0000

@koshembos, I don’t understand (don’t have context for) this comment and I’m curious – what are you referring to?

“Democrats (small d) don’t thrive to be fascists no matter how much Berkeley professors encourage them to be.”

Pamphleteers in the French Revolution, is what my youngest brother said about progressive blogs a few years ago. So yes, I echo the point on underground press.

This piece on the origins of OWS is fun to read – it was started by correspondence – http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:15:09 +0000

I thought Egan’s portrait of how easily hacked social media could be was very realistic! I don’t write about it here, but I (like any blogger who has any measurable traffic, I am sure) get all kinds of e-mails alerting me to new books or movies I might like, offers of swag, etc. I just summarily delete them–but I think that’s clearly where social media is going. The main value of blogs like this one is that 1) we have an imagined community, and 2) I have some kind of authority or influence over the people who read the blog. It’s even more valuable on a blog like this one that doesn’t accept advertising, see?

Like I said: dirty dirty dirty.

By: widgeon

widgeon — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 01:43:55 +0000

I believe Egan’s dystopian ideas about social media at the end of her novel have gotten some criticism. Probably warranted. (Also I’m a bit thrilled you read it on my recommendation). But I agree with FA that the underground discourse is significant. As an urban historian mildly obsessed with issues of space it’s fascinating to me how bodies in physical spaces create such “problems” and possibilities. And, of course, huge historical continuities. Being physically present has meaning. But being cyber present has meaning too.