See also: USDayOfRage Occupy Wall Street Adbusters Media Foundation
Founded
in 2011, Take The Square (TTS) describes
itself as a nonviolent
organization seeking “to change an unfair system” – i.e.,
free-market capitalism – by implementing “specific and feasible
alternatives” that will “improve life on this planet for all its
inhabitants.” Proposing
“global ... solutions” for “global problems,” TTS emphasizes
“solidarity” among “human beings fighting and acting together
regardless of [geographic] borders” and unbeholden to the interests of any
particular nation. As of September 2011, TTS had chapters
in Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Take The Square characterizes its members and supporters as “indignant
citizens who have had enough” of “being commodities for
politicians and bankers to deal in.” Complaining that a mere 1
percent of America's population holds a vast majority of the country's wealth,
TTS's U.S. chapter members affirm:
“We are the 99% and we demand our share!” In a bid
to “challenge
Wall Street’s influence and corporate rule of our lives,” TTS
rejects
the notion that ordinary citizens “should
have to pay the costs of the [economic] crisis” that struck the United States in 2008, while the “instigators” of that crisis “continue
to post record profits.”
Wholly opposed to the role of money in U.S.
politics, TTS has also called
for the Citizens
United v. FEC
Supreme
Court decision of 2010 – which nullified a provision of the
McCain-Feingold
Campaign Finance Reform Act
barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made
independently of candidate campaigns – to be overturned.
TTS
originally grew out
of a Spanish protest movement whose signature event was a May 15,
2011 demonstration (popularly known as “M15”) – organized by
Democracia
Real Ya
(Real Democracy Now) – where tens of thousands of marchers
assembled in Madrid to protest their country's newly enacted economic
reforms which included a hike in the retirement age from 65 to
67; cutbacks to government-funded social-welfare programs; reforms
to a collective-bargaining system which had traditionally ensured
annual pay raises across all sectors and industries; and labor-law
changes designed to make it easier for employers to fire workers.
The Spanish government enacted each of these reforms out of desperation, as the country's foundering economy was plagued by a 21.3 percent unemployment
rate. From observing
the M15 demonstrators who flooded the streets and plazas of Madrid,
TTS derived “the idea of camping
in the square as a way of demonstrating against a dominant and
oppressive system [led] by a political class working for banks and
big corporations.”
TTS's
United States chapter – based in New York City – was a
key
organizer of a September 17, 2011
“Day of Rage” protest targeting Wall Street, the hub of Manhattan's financial district. The group billed
this event as an opportunity for people to “take to the streets and
squares of their communities as a unified expression of resistance” against “social, environmental and economic [in]justice.”
Calling
on Americans everywhere to fight “market dictatorship,” TTS promoted the September 17 gathering
by issuing such rallying cries as: “People
of the world rise up”; “Take to the streets”; and “We are
legion.” Other noteworthy organizers of the day's events,
which drew approximately 1,000 participants, included
USDayOfRage,
NYC
General Assembly, Occupy Wall Street, the Adbusters Media Foundation, and
Anonymous.
According
to journalist Aaron Klein, the September 17 protests apparently
represented “the culmination” of a campaign by Wade
Rathke, founder of ACORN
and president of an SEIU
local in New Orleans, who in March 2011 had issued a call for “days
of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase.” Rathke's efforts
were supported
by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member and radical-left organizer
who candidly aims
to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a
movement”; “bring down the stock market”; “bring down [the]
bonuses” of executives in the financial sector; and “interfere
with their ability to ... be rich.”
On October 1, 2011, a horde of the Wall Street demonstrators shut down
traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for two-and-a-half hours, a move that
resulted in some 700 arrests. Among the high-profile personalities who had already made personal appearances in support of the demonstrators were filmmaker Michael Moore (who spoke at the September 17 New York rally), Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons, Cornel West, Charles Barron, Frances Fox Piven, and Charles Rangel.
Professing
to “reac[h] decisions openly, democratically and horizontally,”
TTS has “no leaders or hierarchy” in charge of its operations. Its organizing efforts rely
heavily on the use of Internet social media outlets such as Twitter
and Facebook, which enable its members and supporters “to
reach all the nooks and crannies in cyberspace.”