THE FLOWCHART OF THE DECLARATION OF THE OCCUPATION OF WALL STREET (2011) Is an illustration of The Declaration of the Occupation of NYC- a document written collectively by the Call to Action Working Group, and approved by the OWS General Assembly, during the heyday of the Occupy Movement, in Zuccotti Park, September 2011.
I drew this image in consultation with activists and organizers engaged in the Occupy movement. It turns the list of grievances that motivated the Occupy movement into a chart that illustrates their interconnections. In a moment in history when the world was hungry to understand the Occupy movement, the image was designed to address the answer hard questions the world was asking: What is the Occupy Movement fighting for? Why are you talking about so many different problems? How do all these threads connect back to Wall Street?
I consider it a great honor and responsibility to steward the legacy of the Occupy movement through this image. 11 years after the movement began, more than 8,000 print copies have been distributed, and I continue to receive new inquiry related to the piece from around the world. It’s been published in anthologies, displayed in Museums, written about in histories of the Occupy movement, and transformed in to a variety of other creative works used in the streets of movements—some of which are shown below. In 2019, it was even added to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Most meaningfully, the poster hangs in the homes of countless participants in the Occupy Movement who continue to apply the lessons they learned in this critical moment in movement history to many kinds of work to transform our world.
The Occupy movement is long over, and so there are no formal organizing bodies to which I am accountable to about how this image lives in the world. I welcome reflections and feedback on how the image lives in the world, and am always happy to send copies to fellow Occupiers- please do be in touch if you would like one, or a stack!
