Occupy writers
Oct. 18th, 2011 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrYes, I am still obsessing about Occupy Wall Street. Now there's a way that writers can help. A new website has been started called Occupy Writers (they're on twitter as @OccupyWriters). Read about it here:
Taking up their pens to fight, more than 100 authors have signed up at Occupy Writers, a Web site that launched last week as a rallying point for authors to show their support for the protest movement.
Francine Prose, author of “Blue Angel,” “Reading Like a Writer” and “Goldenglove.” (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
As well as offering a petition (which succinctly reads, “We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world”), the organizers of the site are asking the authors to write about their experiences and thoughts about the protests. So far, two authors have posted messages.
The first, from author Francine Prose, is a short, impassioned paragraph about the protests moving her to tears.
“I kept thinking about how, since this movement started, I’ve been waking up in the morning without the dread (or at least without the total dread) with which I’ve woken every morning for so long, the vertiginous sense that we’re all falling off a cliff and no one (or almost no one) is saying anything about it.”
Poet D.A. Powell also added his voice to the conversation, in a poem titled “The Great Unrest.” Lemony Snicket, the penname of author Daniel Handler, posted thirteen observations “while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.” Number 11: “Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.”
Other authors are using Twitter to show their support for the protests. Salman Rushdie was one of the first writers to agree to sign up for the Occupy Writers protest. On Sunday, he made a trip to Zuccotti Park, writing on Twitter about his experience there.
The list has a mix of radical writers and moderate ones.