Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice

by Marisa Holmes

This book is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn.

363 pages, Hardcover

Published July 9, 2023

Reviews

[Sean McKeown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was at the NYC Occupation after about the third week or so, and it didn't take much looking around to figure out that Marisa was one of the people there doing the most work to keep things moving. There are places I saw something different than she did and thus reached different conclusions, and there are places where I have a different political framework and thus apply a different perspective on what happened and why, but Marisa definitely knows in considerable detail what brought the NYC occupation into existence and what international context shaped that particular moment in time.

I can vouch for the fact that this is an authoritative analysis of that place and that time, by someone who was deeply involved from before the beginning. :)

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who wants to change the world should read this book! It is an invaluable insider's account of how to organize a movement, and all the challenges that come up along the way. It's honest, emotional, and takes you on a rollercoaster of a ride. You won't want to put it down.