Anons plan to take to the streets in downtown H-town
By Alex Wukman
For over a week now supporters of the internet entity Anonymous have been encamped in the heart of New York’s financial district in an attempt to change the corporate friendly political climate. The media coverage of the event has been spotty at best and what has been reported hasn’t always been positive. The demonstrators proclaimed their desire to turn Wall Street into America’s Tahrir Square-whether it’s working or not is another matter. Now some ambitious Anons want to bring the party to Houston.
The group, calling itself Occupy Houston, wants to have protestors meet at Market Square at 7:30 a.m. on October 6 and march to both Chase tower and the Chronicle building. A message sent from Occupy Houston’s twitter account to the Houston Chronicle’s twitter account/RSS feed stated that demonstrators “will be outside your offices on Oct. 6 in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street” and asked “will you be able to ignore us then?”
Regardless of whether or not the Chron deigns to send a reporter out their front door Occupy Houston has already caught the attention of some of Houston’s more prominent activists and, at leas virtually, a generation gap seems to have been playing out on social media. Older activists in the Houston scene, like Harbeer Sandhu and Art Brown, spent time trying to determine affiliations with organizations, like the Revolutionary Communist Part and the International Socialist Organization, that have traditionally defined the the extreme fringe of progressive politics and seemed to be amused by the newness Occupy Houston is bringing to organizing while failing to understand the culture that Anonymous has created. As Sandhu wrote in an exchange he had with Occupy Houston on twitter “calling for transparency and accountability while remaining anonymous is ironic.”
Sandhu wasn’t the only one to seemingly not remember that Occupy Wall Street, and it’s offshoots, started on internet relay chat boards populated by hacktivists. Art Browning, another old school leftist, put it bluntly when he wrote that “everybody seems to love V for Vendetta, but the masks turn me off.” As is customary in Anonymous culture, and it’s many offshoots, the Occupy Houston Facebook profile picture includes the Guy Fawkes mask made famous in the film V For Vendetta.
Whether Occupy Houston will be able to bypass the turf battles that have traditionally defined the Houston left for so long and get people out in the streets remains to be seen.
Divided we fall. Our goals are the same. We need to come together!!!
We have common interests and in a lot of ways our objectives are the same-egalitarianism-equality for all members of society, regardless of sex, ethnicity, and age.
What the author of this article fails to realize is that this is not an anonymous rally. This is an assembly for anyone and everyone that is tired of living in corporatocracy. It seems that anytime a group of well meaning individuals attempt to bring about a positive change, unless they are well known, dressed a certain way, or fight under a certain banner, they aren’t to be given any respect or acknowledgment. It matters not what the ‘older, more prominent activists’ say or think about this gathering, their negativity strips neither the heart nor the will of the people standing up for what they believe.
Dammit. Why can’t this be on a Friday? Not all of us who want to participate are college kids who can spend a whole Thursday protesting!!!
Most of us are planning on being there for more than one day…everyone is welcome
This is about the people speaking out against what has plagued us all for so long. Educate yourself, your neighbors, and your children. Speak your mind, use your voice, invoke your rights! Find what this means for you. You aren’t joining hackers or cults, you will be joining a motion, a revolution. This is our generation and we are taking back the control. We are taking back what we love about our country, what we love about our world. Everything is to be done in peace and harmony. Use your words and your brain. Don’t sit at home in silence, sit with us in thought for change.
supporters on Anonymous in nyc? is that all you see there? not the rift of the rich and poor, not the desire to change capitalism as we know it? you think everyone that is camped out on wall street is a hacktivist or even knows about Anonymous? This is some shoddy reporting free press. instead of talking about the issues you are trying to drive factions apart. to classify and degenerate on age? to fall into old traps of the “generation gap”. alex, i’m sure glad you didn’t quote old me out of context from that facebook thread where you copped all your quotes. not that i believe there is anything private about facebook, but that’s just lazy and irresponsible. people deserve to have a place to freely discuss and debate without your using it as a means to publish a story that probably puts more people off from being involved than it does contribute to change. i suggest clearing your quotes with your sources and asking if they want to “go on the record”. some people can’t, for fear of retribution at work or home.
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hey Alex…it’s good to see you doing some coverage of this and it was good you came out today, but hopefully next time you come out you’ll stay a little longer and see what everything is all about instead of immediately being paranoid about undercover cops and seemingly let that be the reason you don’t get involved. It is going to take more than blogging/chatting anonymously on the internet to change things in this country.
Also, I don’t think any of the people in attendance were actually affiliated w/ Anonymous and Anon is only a small part of the Occupy WallStreet crowd…I think to continually place every protest under the umbrella of Anon is incorrect.
hope to see you again.
Alex, you’re really lazy. The Occupy movement came out of the Canadian group, Adbusters. Not Anonymous. This is really easy to find information. Please do us all a favor, hole up in your room, and ignore this movement.