After a month of the genesis of the %99 or 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, writers and philosophical thinkers show more interest in joining the protesters. According to Jeff Sharlet, the petition list is stunningly diverse in terms of class, race, interests, and genre.

IBNA: According to the website of Occupy Writers, the number of undersigned writers of the online petition exceeds thirteen hundred. Among them, the names of writers and acitvists such as Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams, Naomi Wolf, political counselor and author of The Beauty Myth, James Wolcott, media critic, Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani author of The Duel, Doug Henwood, author of Wall Street, Ismail Khalidi, Palestinian-American playwright, and Sarah Irving, author of Gaza and advocate of Electronic Intifada are outstanding. 

After a month of the genesis of the %99 or 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, writers and philosophical thinkers show more interest in joining the protesters. Last week, Slavoj Zizek joined protesters at Wall Street by yelling out: "We are not dreamers; we are the awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare." 

The Writers' Awakening: from Protest to Publish 

The participants in the Occupy Writers petition are from various cultural, ideological and ethnic backgrounds. But it seems to me that Occupy Writers are rather 'inspired' by than actually 'inspiring' the democratic leader-free Wall Street Movement. Now the main question is that to what extent the Occupy Writers will accompany the angry mob? 

"I don't think we're actively seeking anything but all the writers who want to sign on," says Jeff Sharlet, volunteer manager of OccupyWriters.com. 

Admitting to the influence of the protesters on the writers, Sharlet added: "But we are the movement, too. Many of us have camped, marched, spoken. Many have contributed books to the Occupy libraries, read poems, written about the movement. Now OccupyWriters.com is publishing Occupied Writings -- you can see the first batch at the top of the page. My personal favorite is from the enormously popular children's author Lemony Snicket." 

He who says Yes, he who says No 

Despite global interest of writers in the Occupy Movement, there are still some missing faces in the petition, writers that are by chance the well-offs of the American society with considerable annual benefits from world-wide sale of their novels. Now after a week of the launching of Occupy Writers petition, we are tempted to know why some world-known writers keep silent and indifferent to the current events. Are there any economical-political reasons behind this, or do they actually belong to the upper %1 capitalists of the American society? 

Reacting to this question, Sharlet said: "I admit that it's tempting to think about who's NOT on the list, but we resist doing so. First of all, it's quite possible someone simply hasn't heard about it -- it's been largely word of mouth (though that's some big mouth -- 100,000 visitors today). Secondly, people have all sorts of reasons for getting involved or not getting involved, and we respect that. 

The researcher of religious subcultures continued: "I think the list is stunningly diverse in terms of class, race, interests, and genre. There are "literary" writers, chick lit authors, major poets, historians, thriller writers, mystery writers, sci fi writers, graphic novelists, children's authors. Whether there's a pattern, we don't know -- we're too busy entering all the new signatories and reading their stories." 

And he is so right. Since the launching of Occupy Writers, Jeff Shalret and his colleagues has been busy updating the website with the observations, memories and writings of writers and artists joining the petition.

 

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Reporter: Farzaneh Doosti

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