This week Occupy activists in Iowa, who've been urging caucus-goers to vote for "Uncommitted" in Tuesday's Republican and Democratic caucuses, cried fowl when the Iowa GOP signaled it would only count votes for declared presidential candidates this year. Tuesday night, Iowans launched a "People's Caucus," at which they discussed policy resolutions and then broke up into "dispreference groups" based on which candidates they were most eager to demonstrate against. Activists were arrested at campaign offices and at a Wells Fargo, which they had linked back to a Romney office via a cardboard "pipeline" representing the cash flow from the bank to the candidate.
Thursday, New York OWS activists joined an "Un-settling Occupation" summit on the anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre. The occupiers, who've drawn criticism for branding themselves with a word associated with colonial violence, met with American-Indian activists to discuss the legacy of conquest and how to build a broader movement.
Meanwhile, police raided Occupy Phoenix in Caesar Chavez Plaza for the second time this month. Oakland police cleared out a new occupation site less than a week after activists set it up as a "safe haven" for winter. Activist web developers announced the creation of organizing-oriented alternatives to Facebook. For New Year's Eve, some New York activists put out a call to return to Zuccotti Park with "Love and Drums and Food."
The Five Most Important OWS Pieces This Week
- Salon sits in on an InterOccupy conference call.
- Mark Engler's Occupy Iowa dispatch.
- Occupy Oakland debates becoming "Decolonize Oakland" instead.
- Seth Ackerman argues that radical occupiers and union officials both get labor militancy wrong.
- Sarah Seltzer asks what the reproductive rights movement can learn from OWS.