The Occupied Wall Street Journal. Issues 1-5
New York: [Occupied Media], 2011. 1st Edition. 5 issues, broadsheet bifolia loose in signatures.
"Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave." (Chris Hedges, in Issue 1). First five issues (a complete "Zuccotti" run) of the unofficial publication of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest movement, which sought to confront income inequality and the corporate capture of American democracy. Cheekily titled The Occupied Wall Street Journal, the alternative media project was launched in October 2011, less than one month after Occupy began, by independent journalists Arun Gupta, Jed Brandt, and Michael Levitin. One of many Occupy-associated projects that were collectively managed, the self-funded, self-published paper was undoubtedly the most disseminated publication at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park – the movement's ground zero – and beyond (and was unique in being issued in both English and Spanish). Co-founder Gupta, asked about the decision to create a print newspaper when social media played such a vital role in the movement (it began as a Twitter experiment in July, when Adbusters magazine posted a suggestion for a September 17th march in Lower Manhattan), said, "The movement was being...misrepresented by the mainstream media, so we felt there had to be media that was bringing out the stories, the ideas, the politics of the movement itself. I've been publishing newspapers for a long time, and there's no substitute for them even in the digital age. Being able to pass newspapers hand to hand creates a connection that you don't just get with the web." The paper began with modest goals, setting up a Kickstarter campaign hoping to raise $12,000 within ten days. However, with promotional assistance from Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, CODEPINK, and The Yes Men, OWSJ broke their initial mark in just ten hours, raising over $75,000. (At the time, it put the journal in ranks with Kickstarter's most funded projects in the writing and publishing category.) While co-founders Levitin and Brandt initially aspired to make the OWSJ an ongoing national publication, the November 2011 fifth issue was its last concomitant with the high-point of the movement (protestors were forced from Zuccotti Park on November 15), owing largely to exhausted funding. A sixth "May Day" issue was published in spring 2012 (with no copies seen by us), and a website, www.occupy.com, continues publication. Several print projects produced or co-produced by OWSJ editors followed in the newspaper's wake, including The Battle of New York (with The Indypendent, 2016), the Spanish-language paper IndigNación (2012), Tidal Magazine (2012), and Strike the Prisons (Seattle, 2014). The run assembled here comprises: Issue 1 (no date), Issue 2 (Saturday, October 8, 2011), Issue 3 (Saturday, October 22, 2011), Issue 4 (November, 2011 - the "Poster Folio" issue), and Issue 5 (November, 2011 - North American Edition). While tens of thousands of copies of each issue were published, examples in the trade are rare, with only a handful of institutions listed in OCLC demonstrably holding a complete run. All issues folded horizontally, with vertical center crease, some toning, and minimal wear and soiling from handling. A near fine set of an important and rare periodical. Item #7080
$1,500.00