CMN 220: Communication Strategy and Spaces as Places of Public Policy
(Monday 30 January)
OWS Communication and Media Strategy: Group Discussion
Group 1:
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What links were drawn between OWS and other movements? Influences or inspirations?
1. 1962 student radicals gathered in Michigan to complete the Port Huron Statement,
founding document of Students for a Democratic Society (p17)
 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement
in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the
country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in
the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.
 The Port Huron Statement criticized the political system of the United
States for failing to achieve international peace and critiqued Cold War
foreign policy, the threat of nuclear war, and the arms race. In domestic
matters, it criticized racial discrimination, economic inequality, big
businesses, trade unions and political parties. In addition to its critique and
analysis of the American system, the manifesto also suggested a series of
reforms: it proclaimed a need to reshape into two genuine political parties
to attain greater democracy, for stronger power for individuals through
citizen's lobbies, for more substantial involvement by workers in business
management, and for an enlarged public sector with increased government
welfare, including a "program against poverty." The manifesto provided
ideas of what and how to work for and to improve, and also advocated
nonviolent civil disobedience as the means by which student youth could
bring forth a "participatory democracy."
2. Civil rights movement (p15)
3. Tahrir Square
4. 1999 WTO Seattle protests
5. Tea Party
6. Open source software
Group 2
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What types of people-led protests or actions?
1. Boycotts of Starbucks and Huffington Post (p15)
2. Protest holidays (p15)
3. Sit-in (p18)
4. Shut down the NYSE
5. “Day of Action” protests
Group 3
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What are types of media talked about in the article?
1. Adbusters magazine
2. E-mail/mass e-mail
3. Phone calls; mass text messages
4. Photocopies maps
5. Book
6. Marches and meetings
7. Memorandum
8. Websites
9. Essay
10. Poster
11. Social Media: Twitter, Reddit
12. Manifesto/letter to the President
13. Anarchist graffiti on bank walls
14. Rain-smeared cardboard sign (p18)
Group 4
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What are some of the communication techniques and strategies used?
1. Phase I, Phase II; ‘swarming strategy’ (p14)
2. Synecdoches used: A rhetorical strategy in which a part is used to represent a
whole: ‘Wall Street’ to stand for whole financial industry; ‘Bloombergs of the
world’ to refer to Michael Bloomberg and authority figures; ‘America needs its
own Tahrir’  ‘Tahrir’ stands for the entire Egyptian revolution. (p14)
3. Strategy: Timing (p 15)
4. Joining forces with other groups
5. “horizontal” organizing methods, hand signals, general assemblies (p15); later the
article also compares horizontal and vertical methods (p 17)’; how does this
work?
6. Vagueness of message as a strategy (p17)
Lecture
OWS Public Space
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Article talks about Zuccotti Park as an ‘encampment’, ‘epicenter’ ‘patch of granite in
lower Manhattan’ ‘center of gravity’
Wall Street as a topic of OWS – remember also the Adbuster description of Wall Street
as a financial “Gomorrah”.
o Gomorrah, along with Sodom, was one of two infamous Biblical cities mentioned
in the Book of Genesis and later throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New
Testament and Deuterocanonical sources as well as the Quran. In Christian and
Islamic traditions, Sodom and Gomorrah have become synonymous with
impenitent sin, and their fall with a proverbial manifestation of God's wrath.
Seven possible locations, Zuccotti Park was Location Two.
Public Spaces as Places of Public Policy
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Venues to act on policies or bring issues to the attention of policymakers.
o E.g. Zuccotti Park, New York, U.S., 2011o E.g. Tahrir Square, Egypt, 2010/2011.
o E.g. Tiananmen Square, China, 1989.
o E.g. Hyde Park, London (perpetual)
o E.g. Black Panthers salute at the 1968 Olympics, Mexico City, Mexico.
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Public spaces also form the subjects of policy itself
o E.g. The 2010 controversy over the proposed construction of a mosque near
Ground Zero.
o E.g. Segregated schools and public spaces before the civil rights acts.
o E.g. The debate over the design for the Vietnam War Memorial.
o E.g. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip (since 1948); Kashmir (India vs.
Pakistan); Tibet (India vs. China)
o E.g. Mahatma Gandhi protesting the British government’s tax on salt by making
salt from the Ganges River in 1930 (14 days, 240 mile march).
o E.g. Saudi Arabia is constructing a sports stadium in which women will be
allowed (for the first time) to attend sporting events in public. The stadium will be
completed in 2014.
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Does your policy subject have a geographic focus?
o E.g. Is it about the removal or adoption of a certain space? The construction or
demolition of a building/clearing of land? The ownership to a piece of land?
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Will your policy have a center of action?