19 September 2011, New York-A group of people, no more than one hundred, had congregated in Zuccotti Park two days before amidst the almost total indifference of people passing by.
No journalists, no television, no microphones—only their voices and faces.
These portraits bear witness to the beginning of Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park. They regard dreamers who believe in an idea.
No one could have imagined that in the space of a few weeks, those involved in Occupy Wall Street would have entered people’s homes all over the world through newspapers and television.
-Daniele Corsini, photographer
View a selection of images on our Flickr page, or the full photo series at Corsini’s website.
Occupiers assembled last Saturday in solidarity with victims of police brutality. A group of hundreds that included city council members marched for hours from Liberty Plaza to join hundreds more at Union Square. On the way, they shared messages on the right to assemble with evocative banners, chanting, and performance art. Photographer Rose Magno documents this expressive and coherent culture of a civil society coming together in peaceful protest.
By the time I woke up the next morning (ok, afternoon…), someone had done a spoken-word version on Youtube, which already had about 700 views. That version now has over 43,000 views, and there are scads of copycats and different versions, including Greek and Portuguese subtitled versions:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVX7Pzz_rLc
Then I turned it into a song in my little home “studio”. I had written the song at the same time in late September, but for some reason didn’t release it on Youtube until February 13th, 2012. Here is the song/video: http://youtu.be/7waDw62b7j4
Within 12 hours of posting this song/video to Youtube, Iran’s Press TV contacted me for an interview (about 3 minutes), which was broadcast globally:http://youtu.be/2spFB_q3STI
I don’t know if it’s inspiring to anyone else, but it is certainly inspiring to me to know that I can write a poem/song in order to make my voice more heard, and it actually worked, and got me (a nobody, trust me), on world news… It really can work! It did for me. I got good exposure for the Occupy Movement, and 3 minutes of my “15-minutes-of-fame”, so now I’m only owed 12 more minutes.
OAKLAND, CA - Here’s a song by Fresh Juice Party called “99″ and an accompanying slideshow of our photos from Occupy Oakland and SF. Happy holidays and don’t forget to #SupplyOccupy!
OAKLAND, CA - I am part of an organization called Fresh Juice Party(www.freshjuiceparty.org) .Among other things, we write songs about political issues. We started this project on April 21, 2011 when we interrupted President Obama at a fundraiser to sing him a song about the treatment of accused Wikileaks soldier Bradley Manning. We’ve since written nine more songs about current events. Here is one of them, “99″ which was written by Craig Casey & Pratibha Gautam. Another member, Naomi Pitcairn, took the photos at Occupy Oakland and Occupy SF. Pratibha put together and edited the slideshow. Enjoy!
