From Cairo To Wall Street

“The first essential text of a new and remarkably dynamic era of social activism that has already brought profound change to the world.” —Bob Herbert Something was in the air in 2011, as protest movements swept through the world—from the Arab Spring, to Spain’s Indignados, to the Occupy Wall Street movement that spread from Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan across the United States in the wake of the global financial collapse. This volume collects firsthand accounts and essays about this extraordinary period—providing not only an overview of recent historical events and personal insights about what motivates people to take a stand, but also food for thought on how these events marked a turning point that shaped our current world.

"In this volume which I present to the public, I have given a very brief abstract (except as to those places seldom visited or written about) of wanderings in Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa, with a literal transcript of that during my travels in India, China, and Java, taken from a continuous journal in letters to my mother, during a period of five or six years in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and of course reliable from the very nature of the journal. And it is only now, when India and its affairs have assumed such a vast importance before the world, that I have been induced to yield to the repeated solicitations of friends, to give the public my mite of experience and knowledge of the country, its people, customs, government, army, etc., derived during eighteen months of pleasure travel in which I visited every part of India."--J.B.I., from 'A Word to the Reader'.

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. Much of the discussion of the Occupy phenomenon has treated it as if it lived and died in Zuccotti Park, but Gould-Wartofsky follows the evicted occupiers into exile and charts their evolving strategies, tactics, and tensions as they seek to resist, regroup, and reoccupy. Displaced from public spaces and news headlines, the 99 Percent movement has spread out from the financial centers and across an America still struggling to recover in the aftermath of the crisis. Even if the movement fails to achieve radical reform, Gould-Wartofsky maintains, its offshoots may well accelerate the pace of change in the United States in the years to come.

Looks at the reasons why the mainstream media didn't see 2008's financial crisis coming.

A record of the thinking, writing and imagery from Occupy, and a tool for those who carry the Movement forward.

All performances - whether music, theater, visual arts, or even street protests or games — have this in common: they happen somewhere, within a space. This anthology explores the complicated relationship between performance and the space in which it is hosted. Examining both well-known spaces — such as concert halls or stages — as well as unconventional ones, such as the street, the contributors investigate different conceptions of space, how space is experienced, how different spaces are unique from one another, and, ultimately, the ways space enables the performing arts to deeply engage audiences.

Anne Cortez and her son Mark were on a cruise of Scandinavia and Russia, when they witnessed a shooting. Untoward violence seemed to occur around a fellow passenger, Dr. Fawzi Senawi, an Iranian nuclear physicist. Anne and Mark tried to avoid Senawi; but could they turn their back on a dying mans plea that they save his kidnapped son? Acting on a clue, Anne surmised that this was connected to the release of the Stuxnet cyberworm by the USA. This malware was supposed to deter the Iranian nuclear program. Anne and Mark sought the help of the past counter-terrorism czar and other would be patriots, but they are drawn into a deepening web of international intrigue. Could they avert the repercussions of a cyberwar that would disrupt our financial, electrical, and defense systems; and would make possible the prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would fall to triple digits in 2016?