If the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations seen quite un-American, maybe that’s because they are, at least in their point of origin. “The Canadian-based Adbusters [Media] Foundation proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street on September 17,and a lot of us felt that the focus on Wall Street was a stroke of genius because ultimately the problems around budgets were being caused by the control of both the economy and politics,” Jacqueline DiSalvo, an associate professor and OWS organizer, told Paul Basken of the Chronicle of Higher Education in an article which appeared in that publication on November 25, 2011.
“Occupy Wall Street began in part on college campuses and the movement plans to continue there,” Basken wrote. “One of its key coordinators is Jacqueline DiSalvo, a part-time associate professor of English at Baruch College who is also an organizer with the City University of New York faculty union.”
“Occupy Wall Street is much more than just the occupation,” DiSalvo explained to Basken. DiSalvo was a member of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s.
Nevertheless, DiSalvo is optimistic about the prospect of OWS doing quite a bit of actual occupation for some time to come: “I’m hoping that the unions will fund us getting a large indoor space where people could both sleep and meet, and that we would still use the park[Zucotti] but not on a 24-hour basis.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia [1].
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org [2]