NSSR’s Miller and Others Examine Occupy and “The Winter Of Our Discontent”

Posted on February 8, 2012 in The New School, The New School for Social Research

Although it has been months since Zuccotti Park hosted the protestors of Occupy Wall Street, the movement seems far from over. “Mic check,” “99%” and “#ows” have all become instantly recognizable concepts and slogans—and more substantively, income inequality has become a fixture of political discourse.

But what’s next?  Join The New School for Social Research’s Jim Miller, NYU’s Lawrence Weschler, and a host of others for The Winter of Our Discontent: Stepping Back, Taking Stock, and Gazing Forward in the Wake of Occupy Wall Street, Saturday, February 11 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Tishman Auditorium. This free public conversation focuses on the current state of the Left in America, and where it should be headed, given the game-changing forces unleashed by Occupy Wall Street. Participants include:

  • James Miller, professor of Politics and chair of Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, SDS veteran, author of Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, and a co-convener (with Lawrence Weschler) of this symposium.
  • David Graeber, anthropologist, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and anarchist activist credited with coining OWS’s mantra “We are the 99%.”
  • Todd Gitlin, professor of sociology and journalism at Columbia University, onetime president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; Letters to a Young Activist; and a forthcoming book on Occupy Wall Street.
  • Stephen Lerner, Washington, D.C.-based labor and community organizer, till recently with the Service Employees International Union where he led its Justice for Janitors campaign.
  • Yotam Marom, a political organizer, educator, and writer based in New York, a veteran of Occupy Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park occupation, and member of the Organization for a Free Society.
  • Jonathan Schell, formerly with the New Yorker, more recently with The Nation Institute, Toms Dispatch and Yale University, author of The Fate of the Earth andThe Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People.
  • Marina Sitrin, lawyer, teacher, activist and author of the just-released Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina.
  • Rebecca Solnit, longtime San Francisco-based anti-globalization activist and author of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, and A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.
  • Lawrence Weschler, director of The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, author of The Passion of Poland, Vermeer in Bosnia, and Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, and a co-convener (with James Miller) of this symposium.

This symposium is co-sponsored by The New School and NYU’s New York Institute for the Humanities.