Portraits from the Revolution: Interviews with the Protestors from Occupy Wall Street, 30 September–8 October 2011

The animating spirit of Occupy Wall Street—the populist protest over income inequity and its attendant problems that roiled the streets of lower Manhattan for two months in 2011—courses through the interviews and essays that make up this slim dispatch from the front lines of the movement at its dawning. Although the interviewees were drawn to the protest for the wide variety of issues that it accommodated—ranging from corporate greed to despoiling of the environment, dependence on nuclear energy, and inadequate allocation of resources—most cite America’s economic woes as the source of the problems and align themselves with “the 99 percent” at the bottom of the income ladder. The 14 people interviewed by the author vary in age and occupation and all are articulate about their grievances, notably the college student who says “[the grievances] may be hard to solve but they’re not hard problems to think of solutions for.” The author offers no discussion of how the protest came to happen or what its ramifications were, and he repeatedly imposes his assessment that the event is “the Woodstock of our time.” Although it provides interesting commentary, this book reads less like a finished work than raw footage in need of shaping. [em](BookLife) [/em]