State of the Nation

The Occupy Wall Street movement has grown from local to global. From dozens to hundreds to thousands. After initial success, it’s now at a turning point in the movement — the second phase. It can either devolve into its anarchistic tendencies, or unify to create a more powerful voice. The crux right now is local governments joining forces and evicting protesters in New York and other encampments. This will force the movement underground, or in direct confrontation with the powers that be, and this change could force some real direction and movement, sluggish at best with group sentiment leading decision making, rather than centralized leadership. It’s very possible that now this fracturing, or attempt at fracturing the group, will eliminate the fringe members, and galvanize the die-hards.

Occupy Wall Street is calling tomorrow, November 17, or #N17, a day of action, two months to the day that the occupation began in Zuccotti Park.

To stay on point with all of the varied Occupy news, check out Greg Mitchell at The Nation. He just released released an ebook based on his very popular Occupy Blog: 40 Days That Shook the World: from Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere. Pick it up—which I guess means downloading now.

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One of the biggest stories regarding Occupy you don’t hear enough of is the media blackout going on—whether suspicious social media control, restricted airspace to not allow helicopter camera views, reporters barred from covering events, even reporters getting detained and arrested for doing their job, amid the protest.

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One of the best stories I’ve kept up with Occupy, is the flack Jay-Z and Rocawear have gotten for releasing an Occupy All Streets t-shirt. It was reported in the WSJ that Rocawear removed the pages from their website.  Yesterday, I visited the site, was able to find the image of the shirt, and purchase. It’s on back order til the middle of December, but if you want, Jigga man gon give it t’ya.

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And from one occupation to another…After failing to work out a deal, arguing over nickel and diming each other, the nba players union disbanded, the season was canceled, and the players are now filing an antitrust suit against the owners. Ech. Disgusting. When people can’t get enough work to feed their families, living check to check, these guys can’t agree on how many millions they get to pocket off basketball.

The nba is now written in lowercase. We have entered into what commissioner david stern calls the “nuclear winter of the nba.” Not only will this be a stunning loss to revenue and the basketball culture, but overall goodwill among men is severly chopblocked on this one—Andrew Bynum- Jose Barea style. Dirty.

Here lies the game. It was once great. Now it is gone. RIP nba.

—Adam Popescu