Sharing a new series from Future Hindsight, Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising.

Hi, everyone. This is Adam Becker. This is not an extra episode of Dreaming Against the Machine, but we do have something special for you today, even though it's a Thursday and not a Tuesday. There is a podcast called Future Hindsight that has a mission pretty similar to the mission of Dreaming Against the Machine. And they are doing a special series right now for the 15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street called Occupy, An Unfinished Uprising. And it's a look at what Occupy Wall Street was and what happened. And I think that there are some really important lessons that we can learn from Occupy Wall Street because, you know, did Occupy Wall Street lead to real accountability for the people who were responsible for the 2008 crash? No, it did not. But... Is the 2008 crash going to be the last crash that we have where we need to find ways to hold people accountable for the damage that they've done to the world and the harms that they've inflicted? No, of course not. In fact, if you listen to the episode just this past Tuesday with Matt Scherer, you know what I think and Matt thinks the next crash is going to be. It's going to be the popping of the AI bubble, and that's going to make 2008 look like nothing. So we are going to have to learn from our past, which is, of course, exactly what the tech overlords never do. And that means taking a look at Occupy Wall Street. And I think it holds some important lessons for us here and now as we approach another crash. So here is the first episode of Occupy, An Unfinished Uprising.

Future hindsight. Zuccotti Park is a tiny plaza in Manhattan's financial district. A small rectangle of concrete and granite surrounded on every side by skyscrapers. It's mostly a spot for office workers to smoke a cigarette or eat a quick falafel while they scroll on their phones. After dark, when the offices have emptied out and the surrounding shops and restaurants are closed, the park gets quiet. Even a little eerie. Usually. But on the night of November 15, 2011, Zuccotti Park was buzzing with tension and fear. Dozens of tents were set up among the grid of carefully landscaped trees, sheltering about 200 activists. They had come to occupy the park as both a political statement and a social experiment, determined to stay as long as they could. It had been 59 days. But now, as the 60th day of the occupation was approaching, hundreds of police officers began swarming the park.

As the cops surrounded them, the occupiers had a live stream going. They sent out a call for help to their network of supporters across the city.

It was the middle of the night and suddenly phone calls, text messages, like all these notifications. My phone just blew the hell up. And it's like, the park is being raided now. We need people now.

Hundreds of supporters began rushing to Zuccotti Park as the occupiers tried to hold ground.

The cops are like right in front of us. A wall of cops in riot gear. They've got the, you know, the shields and they're fully weaponized. And we look like a bunch of hippies.

There's people screaming everywhere. Like literally tents are being torn apart with knives. They're throwing people's stuff over their heads. They're going