FOA: Occupy Ten Years
Ten years ago this week, Adbusters put out a call for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street. Tonight, we revisit a conversation with the magazine's co-founder about the movement's staying power.
FOA: Occupy Ten Years
CH: The idea was simple. And -- for good measure -- it was alliterative: to "seize a square of singular symbolic significance." It came from Adbusters Magazine co-founder Kalle Lasn. In a blog post published ten years ago this week, he advocated that Americans take their cues from the occupation of Tahrir Square by Egyptian protesters -- and stage their own occupation of Wall Street. He called the district "the financial Gomorrah of America". And thousands of New Yorkers clearly saw it that way too -- turning up just a few months later with tents and camp stoves in the city's Zuccotti Park. That historic takeover of public space put the one percent on notice, and sparked a global movement. But by November, 2011, naysayers were already predicting its demise. Kalle Lasn spoke with Carol on "As It Happens" at the time.
SOUNDCLIP
CAROL OFF: Mr. Lasn, since the Occupy Wall Street movement started, people have speculated as to when it will shut down, expecting it to do so any time. Instead, of course, as you know, it has spread. Why do you think that is?
KALLE LASN: Well, I don't think it's about to... to shut down anytime soon. I have a feeling that it's... it's done something quite miraculous over the last five weeks or so, it has launched a national conversation in the United States. It's creeping across into Canada now. And I think we've got the whole world talking about it. We’ve captured the imagination of the whole world. And I think now that winter is approaching, I can see this first wild, messy, crazy occupation phase kind of slowly winding down and the second phase will begin. And I think that the interesting times are still ahead.
CO: What do you think is the second phase?
KL: Well, it's hard to say, you know, movements or revolutions, they have their own dynamic and... and they're full of surprises. But... but I believe that the young people today that the core impulse behind this movement is this feeling that so many young people around the world have, which is that the future does not compute, that their future lives are full of ecological and political and financial crisis, that they won't be able to pay off student loans and they will have to live in a very hot planet down the road. And... and politically, they'll have to put up with systems that are corrupted by money. And young people realize that unless they stand up and start fighting for a different kind of a future, they're not going to have a future. And I think this is the second phase. The second phase will be people, you know, some people will continue to sleep in the... in the parks and, you know, sleep in the snow and inspire all of us. But in the meantime, many of us will go home and we will resurface next spring and we will start fighting for Robin Hood taxes. And in the United States, they'll... they'll fight for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act and will try to ban high-frequency flash trading and... and basically will try to get that money out of... out of our political systems and start creating a new model of democracy that actually is exciting. And... and I predict down the road, you know, there'll be third parties in America evolving, you know, and that America will get beyond this kind of a Pepsi Cola, Coca-Cola, kind of a political system they've had there for a long time. And a third party will rise up and... and dare I say it, I think in Canada as well. I think there's a real potential that, you know, elements of the NDP, elements of the Liberals, elements of the... the Green Party will suddenly coalesce somehow. And this new excitement, young energy, will come in there and we will come up, you know, with a highly energised political system here in Canada instead of this boring, absolutely deadly boring thing that we've had for so many years now.
CO: That's a very, very large vision. [laughing]
KL: Yeah, well, it's you know, permit me for being grandiose for the moment, but I think I can feel it. I can feel this movement is the beginning of a deep transformation of capitalism. It's a game-changer. And down the road, you know, we're going to do things.
CO: But, you know, just wasn't that many years ago you were giving talks, speeches, talking about how you thought that humanity as an experiment had hit a wall, and you had a despairing picture.
KL: Yes.
CO: What do you think the factors are? I mean, there's so many things that contributed to this. The Arab Spring, the... Warren Buffett, perhaps a bit of that, the despair of Americans.
KL: Yeah.
CO: Why... why have you become so inspired by what you see and not despairing of it?
KL: Well, out of despair, revolutions are born. And yeah, for many years, I had a feeling that... that humanity was hitting the walls, that this very dark black hole future we were looking at was actually going to happen. But... but, you know, this movement has given me hope. And I think there's a new magic there, a new mystique. And I believe that... that these young people that are sleeping in parks all around the world and... and eventually in further phases of this movement, I think this movement has the potential to... to... to grow into something that is... that is truly sort of significant and possibly even historic.
CO: The mainstream media initially dismissed this movement. And now we're seeing increasingly that the media, including business media, trying to understand. And I actually include us in that, the CBC, as we try to understand. Do you think we're getting close? Do you think that we are covering this with an understanding of what's really behind it?
KL:I don't think so. I don't think you're even close. I think that this dimension that I'm trying to introduce right now, [chuckling] this idea that this could be a very significant movement, that... that's a game-changer and that we're going for a deep down systemic change, not just nationally, but internationally, and that we want to have a Tahrir moment, not just in America and not just in Canada, but we want to have a global Tahrir moment that we're actually going for a new model of democracy and a deep transformation of the current global system, where, you know, that has one-point-three trillion dollars a day of derivatives and credit default swaps and all kinds of financial instruments sloshing around the system, and which is 50 times more than the actual commercial transactions. That means something. So we're looking at a global economy that is fundamentally corrupt. It's basically run by a bunch of fat cats and financial speculators who make money off money off money ad nauseum. And... and then the whole whole scene is just like a Las Vegas kind of a global casino. And... and this has to change. And this is the sort of fundamental deep down change that we want to pull off. We want to dismantle the global casino. For one thing.
CO: Mr. Lasn, you are an inspiration.
KL: [chuckle] I'm so glad to hear that!
CO: It's good to talk to you.
KL: Adios for now. Bye.
CO: Bye-bye.
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