Generation occupy Reawakening American democracy

This book comprises two memoirs in one. The first examines the lasting impacts of the movement Occupy Wall Street sparked in 2011. The second presents Levitin's career as a freelance journalist who was also a cofounding editor of the Occupied Wall Street Journal. Interweaving his personal involvement in the Occupy movement with the narrative, Levitin opens the book with a description of the movement's birth. He analyzes how the movement changed life and politics in the US and in other parts of the world--perhaps most significant was how it fostered a new way of viewing politics as the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. Topics examined include the movement's genesis in the less-progressive shortcomings of the Obama administration and the movement's effects on the economy, politics, climate issues, labor relations, and the use of technology. The author reviews several "solutionaries" in chapter 9, people who utilize the energy and lessons of the Occupy movement to solve the problems the 99 percent face. Levitin closes the book with an afterword describing the 2020 presidential election through an Occupy framework. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels. --John David Rausch, West Texas A&M University

Journalist and novelist Levitin (Disposable Man) examines in this abundant yet inconclusive study the influence of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests on subsequent social uprisings and progressive causes. A cofounding editor of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, Levitin contends that the movement galvanized a generation of activists and upended top-down models of civil disobedience. He situates the occupation of Manhattan's Zuccotti Park within the context of the contemporaneous Arab Spring uprisings, documents Occupiers' harnessing of social media to spread their message through "meme-ready slogans and sound bites," and talks with participants about their reasons for joining the protests. Some of the activists and journalists Levitin interviews suggest that Occupy's "polarizing tone" and leaderless structure contributed to its collapse, while others see the movement as a successful precursor to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the rise of Bernie Sanders. Levitin includes colorful vignettes of his time at the protests, and offers fresh insights on union workers' participation and the Rolling Jubilee campaign to abolish student debt. But many of Occupy's biggest contradictions, including the question of whether its lack of organization was an essential ingredient or a handicap, are left unresolved. Still, this is a noteworthy contribution to the discussion over why Occupy Wall Street happened, and what it meant. (Sept.)

A vigorous history of the Occupy Movement by a journalist and activist. "Collapsed both from its own lack of structure and from the state violence that suppressed it, Occupy vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived," writes Levitin. It did not die, however. Occupy has spun off into numerous social justice enterprises, one of the most vocal being the movement to resist and forgive student debt, another being the battle against economic inequality (Occupy "introduced the vocabulary of the 99 percent and the 1 percent, putting the crisis of inequality on the map"). Though it seems to have been born overnight and to have centered on Wall Street, Occupy, by Levitin's account, really emerged slowly from the ashes of the Supreme Court's 2000 decision to award the presidency to George W. Bush, who, activists held, was firmly in the thrall of big business interests. That seems to have been confirmed when the court followed up with Citizens United, which gave corporations the same civil rights as individuals, and especially the right to provide endless streams of money to like-minded political candidates. Occupy, essentially, was an anti-corporate movement that "seized its strength from the epicenter of financial greed." Like many autochthonous political movements, it seemed to lack an epicenter itself, and as the author notes, it quickly spread in somewhat diluted form to more than 600 U.S. cities and communities. What its adherents agreed on was that government had a duty to reduce inequality. Given the government's failure to do so meaningfully, by, say, imposing an inheritance tax and otherwise redistributing the $84 trillion in the bands of the baby boomer generation, those adherents have moved on to different battles, including agitation to do something about climate change and to promote immigrant rights, among other matters. An evenhanded account of a political strain that remains influential, if now relatively subdued. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.