Occupy Wall Street

We decided to do things differently for this section compared to the others. Occupy was a long and highly involved project, with the movement and it's actions spanning over many months, through many cities globally. Those protest participants each have rather unique and compelling stories to tell, not only of the marches, but also of how they viewed the movement and it's impact overall. We'd like to allow this page to echo the voices and stories of those who directly participated in the movement. If you'd like to share your experience from any of the Occupy locations and dates, you can submit the text along with date/location (if applicable) info to one of us, contact through one of the social media accts listed on https://lanterns.io/ and we can give you an address to send. Of course, if you wish to remain ANONYMOUS, just let us know and we'll list it under a different name of your choosing, as “Anonymous”, or simply blank.

Anonymous and it's role in Occupy Wall Street is often muddled and comes with varying points of view. All perspectives are valid but what it did do is propel the collective into the mainstream spotlight much to the dismay of many of its early merry interweb pranksters or old phags. Some of these old phags considered OWS Anons annoying moral phags with flowers in their hair and refuted their role in Anonymous as a collective.

On the other side were those who saw the collective as activists and envisioned the power of the internet to be used for social and political change. These Anons saw the interwebs as an instrumental tool for the peoples revolution, not just memes and trolls out to offend and shock everyone who stumbled into their domain. This period of Occupying brought the two forces together to become the final bosses of the internet. Using the power to offend and encourage awakening minds worldwide, spanning all continents and multiple generations using memes, awareness campaigns and the mask as our calling card.

The Guy Fawkes mask up until Occupy was another contentious topic within the collective as it fell again into the two camps of moral vs lulz. Epic fail guy and the green man being the face of lulz, with moral phags embracing the revolutionary Guy Fawkes. While the mask made its first public appearance in 2008 as the public face of Anonymous for a protest against Scientology. It was not until Occupy Wall Street 2011 when Anonymous asked all protesters to come together to rally against corruption and social injustice using the Guy Fawkes mask as its persona.

Today moral phags and lulz phags have adopted the mask often working side by side using their gifts and talents spawned and polished by the Occupy Wall Street protests agreeing to be feared and respected equally. Anonymous through OWS has become global force working for the common person against racism, sexism, fascism, capitalism and bigotry rallying against the corruption and injustice we sought 13 years ago.