The Occupied Wall Street Journal, Nos. 1-2 (2011) [English/Spanish]

“Occupy Wall Street is the beginning of a whole new kind of democracy: a bottom-up people’s democracy led by the 99%. It is a bold vision for the future that is beginning to inspire the nation. However, to pull it off, we’re going to need a robust people’s media unbeholden to corporate money. If we want people’s democracy then we’ve got to build a people’s media — the two are inseparable.

We want to be the people’s media. Our first project is The Occupy Wall Street Journal, a four-page broadsheet newspaper with an ambitious print run of 50,000. It’s aimed at the general public. The idea is to explain what the protest is about and profile different people who have joined and why they joined. We will explain the issues involved and how the general assembly process operates at Liberty Plaza. It will also offer resources and ways to join. The emphasis will be on quality content, design, photography and artwork that uses incisive humor to make it a lively read.

Future projects include longer editions of the newspaper, bold stickers, edgy posters, colorful palm cards and inspiring flyers.

This project is a volunteer effort: every penny you donate will go directly to printing and distribution.

Occupy Wall Street Media is not the “official” media of the occupation — there is no official media! This is one attempt by a group of journalists who support the occupation to offer a way for the general public to hear the stories, perspectives and ideas from inside the movement. We think the more voices, ideas and media the better.” (from project’s Kickstarter page)

authors

commentary on Issue 2 (Daryl Lang, BreakingCopy.com)
commentary on Issue 1 (Daryl Lang, BreakingCopy.com)

Issue 1, published in early October 2011, 4 pages
PDF, Scribd (EN)
PDF, Scribd (ES)

Issue 2, published on 8 October 2011, 4 pages
PDF, Scribd (EN)

Social Text journal dossier: Going Into Debt (2011)

This dossier on debt draws from conversations among the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture about the cultural meanings of debt in relation to the histories of migration, nation-building and state violence, to discourses around nature and intellectual exchange, as well as to the narrative structures that construct and reframe the meanings of debt in daily life.

Contributors: Sigma Colón, Michael Denning, Amina El-Annan, Andrew Hannon, Eli Jelly-Schapiro, Hong Liang, Monica Muñoz Martinez, and Van Truong, with responses by David Graeber and Richard Dienst.

Published by Social Text Collective, New York, in September 2011

View online (HTML articles)

David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011–) [EN, CZ, RU]

“Before there was money, there was debt.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter system–to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins–and the system as a whole began to decline. Interest rates spiked and the indebted became slaves. And the system perpetuated itself with tremendously violent consequences, with only the rare intervention of kings and churches keeping the system from spiraling out of control. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history–as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.”

Publisher Melville House, July 2011
ISBN 1933633867, 9781933633862
542 pages

Original essay (Mute, February 2009)
Illustrated essay with excerpts from the book (Triple Canopy, July 2010)
Video interview on Greece (Democracy Now!, July 2011)
Video interview (PBS: Need to Know, August 2011)

Review: Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (Social Text, 2011).

Publisher

Debt: The First 5,000 Years (English, 2011, updated on 2020-4-10)
Dluh: prvních 5000 let (Czech, trans. Lenka Beranová, 2012, 71 MB, added on 2020-4-10)
Dolg: pervyye 5000 let istorii (Russian, trans. A. Dunayev, 2015, 18 MB, added on 2020-4-10)