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Has 'Occupy' Crashed Or Just Begun?

Protesters, some affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, at the NATO summit in Chicago last month.
Spencer Platt
/
Getty Images
Protesters, some affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, at the NATO summit in Chicago last month.

Occupy Wall Street's founding forum has declared that the movement's "first generation is succumbing to an insidious institutionalization and ossification that could be fatal to our young spiritual insurrection unless we leap over it right now."

And Canada's Adbusters website, which kicked off the Occupy idea last year, says that "putting our movement back on track will take nothing short of a revolution within Occupy."

In a message posted last week that's just beginning to get broad attention elsewhere, Adbusters makes the case that what's needed now are "flash encampments":

"Small groups of fired up second generation occupiers acting independently, swiftly and tenaciously pulling off myriad visceral local actions, disrupting capitalist business-as-usual across the globe."

After reading that, New York magazine says "even Adbusters [now] realizes that Occupy Wall Street isn't working."

Newsbusters.org, which aims to expose "liberal media bias," thinks Adbusters' message is a "sad OWS obituary."

But "Culture Jammers HQ" at Adbusters believes "capitalism is crashing and our movement has just begun." Occupy protesters have shown up at events such as last month's NATO summit in Chicago.

We wonder:

Note: That's just a question, not a scientific survey of public opinion. We'll keep it open until midnight ET Tuesday.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.