1. Who created Occupy Wall Street?

The original idea for Occupy Wall Street was created during a phone call between Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters, and Micah White, an editor at the magazine.

Kalle, Micah and the rest of the Adbusters team then designed a poster and wrote a tactical briefing that called for the protest, named the protest, picked the first day of the protest and identified the key tactic of the protest.

Micah sent the first #OCCUPYWALLSTREET tweet and created the first Occupy Twitter account: @OccupyWallStNYC

The idea for Occupy Wall Street was taken up by roughly 200 activists in New York City who then organized for the first day of the protest.

2. Who are the founders of Occupy Wall Street?

There are roughly 200 people who responded to the call for Occupy Wall Street by holding organizing meetings at Tompkins Square Park in NYC prior to the launch date of September 17, 2011.

These activists used the email list september17 on Google Groups to organize and this website (OccupyWallSt.org) which was created by Justine Tunney.

It is possible to validate whether or not a individual was a founder of Occupy Wall Street by checking when they joined the september17 list.

The founders of Occupy Wall Street transformed the concept put forward by Kalle Lasn and Micah White into the on-the-ground protest in New York City.

3. Histories of Occupy Wall Street

• Pre-Occupied The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street

• Some assembly required Witnessing the birth of Occupy Wall Street

• The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution

• We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation

4. A word of caution about Occupy's social media accounts

The Occupy movement was crushed in 2012. After the collapse of the protest, various individuals continue to use the social media accounts. Not all of these social media accounts are being run by creators, or founders, of Occupy Wall Street. Furthermore, they are often pushing an agenda that is at odds with the spirit of Occupy.

See, for example, the case of @OccupyWallStNYC, the account originally created by Micah White, that was the subject of a lawsuit. Here is a New York Times article about the situation.

We do not recommend trusting social media accounts that continue to post as Occupy Wall Street.

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“Micah White argues convincingly that established modes of protest are outdated and sketches the outlines for how activists can and must innovate. His book is a love letter to activists of the future.” — Michael Hardt

Is protest broken? Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, thinks so. Recent years have witnessed the largest protests in human history. Yet these mass mobilizations no longer change society. Now activism is at a crossroads: innovation or irrelevance.

In The End of Protest White declares the end of protest as we know it and heralds the future of activism. Drawing on his unique experience with Occupy Wall Street, a contagious protest that spread to eighty-two countries, White articulates a unified theory of revolution and eight principles of tactical innovation that are destined to catalyze the next generation of social movements. Sweeping from contemporary uprisings to spiritual and pre-modern revolutions, The End of Protest is a far-reaching inquiry into the miraculous power of collective epiphanies.

Despite global challenges—catastrophic climate change, economic collapse and the decline of democracy—White finds reason for optimism: the end of protest inaugurates a new era of social change. He argues that Occupy Wall Street was a constructive failure that exposed the limits of protest at the same time as it revealed a practical way forward. On the horizon are increasingly sophisticated movements that will emerge in a bid to dominate elections, govern cities and reorient the way we live.

In this provocative playbook, White offers three bold revolutionary scenarios for harnessing the creativity of people from across the political spectrum.

White also shows:

• How social movements are created and how they spread
• How materialism limits contemporary activism
• Why we must re-conceive protest in timescales of centuries, not days

Ultimately, the end of protest is the beginning of the spiritual revolution within ourselves, the political revolution in our communities and the social revolution on Earth.

Rigorous, original and compelling, The End of Protest is an exhilarating vision of an all-encompassing revolution of revolution.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK WORLDWIDE

About the Author

MICAH WHITE, PhD is the influential social activist who co-created the Occupy Wall Street movement while an editor of Adbusters magazine. White has a twenty-year record of innovative activism, including conceiving the debt-forgiveness tactic used by the Rolling Jubilee and popularizing the critique of clicktivism. His essays and interviews on the future of activism have been published internationally in periodicals including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian Weekly and Folha de São Paulo. He has been profiled by The New Yorker, and Esquire recently named him one of the most influential young thinkers alive today. White directs Boutique Activist Consultancy—an activist think tank specializing in impossible campaigns. Dr. Micah White lives with his wife and son in Nehalem, a rural town on the coast of Oregon.

You may remember September, 17th 2011, the fateful night when Occupiers annexed a square block of Manhattan’s financial district. They called it Zuccotti Park—but we renamed it Liberty Square. It was a great victory. We sparked a global uprising against Wall Street tyranny. Now we’re in Philadelphia for the next chapter of our revolution.

We heard the news of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s treachery. We do not view the DNC roll call vote as legitimate. She stole a Democratic nomination that rightfully belongs to Bernie Sanders. She is a true enemy of the people. Her lies have infected the body politic of our global community. Her crimes, revealed by Wikileaks, once punished, will be the end of the Democratic Party.

Last night, July 26th, 2016, we fought this injustice. Our revolution was televised. You may remember the broadcasts of the #DNCWalkOut. These revolutionary delegates walked out on the floor of the Democratic Convention and into the pages of history. They cast a vote of no confidence in Hillary’s autocracy and left the dust of neoliberalism in their wake.

To further escalate the struggle, we have begun a new occupation. Adjacent to the convention, we have pitched our tents in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park. This park now belongs to the people and will henceforth be known as Liberty Park.

We call on our comrades to join us. We will work together to shut down the convention and the manipulations of capitalism and racism found in our government and day to day lives. Join us to #OccupyDNC by joining #OccupyFDR.

Our peaceful presence in this beautiful park will help us strengthen our networks to each other and build political power beyond the campaign of Bernie Sanders.

In light of the WikiLeaks’ revelations of top level DNC undermining of the Sanders campaign, we demand a review and possible re-vote in the states with open lawsuits concerning voter tampering.

We are at the end of July, take a day off, take a sick day, take two days, join us in the park and let your presence be your action. Come to the park and sit-in against both Republican and Democratic leadership. One betrays us with neoliberalism and the other with fascism. Today we stand in a world that is dominated by critiques of capitalism and possible alternatives. Today we stand in a world in which a Democratic Socialist almost became the presidential nominee, were it not for the undermining efforts of top Democratic National Committee leaders.

Our tomorrow is up to you.

#OccupyDNC

Location of the occupation

FDR Park, Philadelphia, PA
East Side
Adjacent to the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center

The City of Philadelphia has informally told us that camping will be "tolerated" around the city, including in FDR Park at night. Please fold/pack up your tents during the day - it will be crazy full with activities at FDR Park.

Photos of the Occupation

Video of the walkout

The murder of five police officers in Dallas has killed street protest. Activists are partly to blame.

You knew your protest marches weren't working. And yet you failed to acknowledge the crisis. The result was predictable and horrifying.

As I warned in April: “it is dangerous to continue to use tactics that aren't effective. What we don't want is for people to lose hope in the possibility of protest entirely. Because then they become more violent.”

Who will march in the streets now that in the best of cases it achieves nothing and in the worst of cases it is used as a cover for lone-wolf terrorism? This is the end of protest.

Now that protest as we know it is no longer an option, activists are faced with a dilemma: win wars or win elections.

Either we gain sovereignty through an armed insurrection that devolves into martial law; or we gain sovereignty by building an electoral social movement capable of sweeping the people into power.

Those are the only options remaining: nihilism or optimism.

I’m on the side of optimism. Will you join me?

Micah White

July 8, 2016

Nehalem, Oregon