About this item
Occupy Wall Street burst onto the stage of history in the fall of 2011. First by the tens, then by the tens of thousands, protestors filled the streets and laid claim to the squares of nearly 1,500 towns and cities, until, one by one, the occupations were forcibly evicted. In The Occupiers, Michael Gould-Wartofsky offers a front-seat view of the action in the streets of New York City and beyond. Painting a vivid picture of everyday life in the square through the use of material gathered in the course of two years of on-the-ground investigation, Gould-Wartofsky traces the occupation of Zuccotti Park--and some of its counterparts across the United States and around the world--from inception to eviction. He takes up the challenges the occupiers faced, the paradoxes of direct democracy, and the dynamics of direct action and police action and explores the ways in which occupied squares became focal points for an emerging opposition to the politics of austerity, restricted democracy, and the power of corporate America.
About the Author
Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky is a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University, and holds a BA in Government from Harvard University. Gould-Wartofsky was one of the first social scientists on the ground at Occupy Wall Street on Sept 17, 2011, beginning his inquiry then and continuing uninterrupted ever since. He has written for The Nation, Monthly Review, Salon, Mother Jones, TomDispatch, and Truth Out. The Occupiers is his first book.
