Constructing archives of the Occupy movement

Abstract

Soon after the establishment of Occupy Wall Street in September 2011, various groups initiated projects to collect and manage records of the movement. This article focuses on two community archives which were established by participants in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia, two formal archives institutions which have collected material and worked to build a relationship between the Occupy movement – the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in New York and the Temple University Urban Archives in Philadelphia – and the Activist Archivists group in New York who have provided advice and assistance to records creators and records collectors in the Occupy movement. The article investigates the ways in which these projects have incorporated the ethos and organizing strategies of the Occupy movement into their work, particularly by focusing on enabling wide participation in the management of records and by working to break down hierarchical relationships between professional archivists and non-professional users of archives.

Keywords::

• archives
• community
• participation
• activism
• horizontalism
• crowdsourcing
• Occupy
• protest

Notes

^1.Taylor et al., Occupy!; Writers for the 99%, Occupying Wall Street; and Mason, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere.

^2. A directory of Occupy sites is available at http://www.directory.occupy.net.

^3. A number of articles were published online in late 2011 and early 2012 reporting on the archives projects of the archives movement: Dean, “The Struggle for the Occupy Wall Street Archives”; A.T., “Documenting the Occupy Protests”; Ferro, “Smithsonian and New-York Historical Society”; Archivists Watch, “Occupy Wall Street Library and Archives”; Samtani, “Anarchivists”; Salazar and Herschaft, “Occupy Wall Street”; Schuessler, “Occupy Wall Street”; and Young, “‘Occupy’ Movement Presents New Challenges.”

^4. See the websites and Facebook groups for the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia Archives Working Groups. http://www.nycga.net/groups/the-occupy-wallstreet-archives; http://www.facebook.com/OWSArchives; http://www.occupyphillyga.net/groups/archives; and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Philly-Archives-WG/255652524511510.

^5.Salazar and Herschaft, “Occupy Wall Street.”

^6.http://www.activist-archivists.org.

^7. These digital archive projects are not the focus of this article. However, a great deal of information about these projects is available online http://www.occupyarchive.org; http://www.archive.org/details/occupywallstreet; Brennan, “Looking at the #Occupy Archive”; “Archive-It Team Encourages Your Contributions”; Ng, “Creating a Living Archive.”

^8.Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 20–21.

^9. The following searches were run on April 15, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query = Occupy&search = tag; http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query = occupy%20wall%20street&search = tag; http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/occupy; and http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/occupywallstreet.

^10. Theimer. A Different Kind of Web; Theimer, “What is the Meaning of Archives 2.0?”; Theimer, “Exploring the Participatory Archives”; and Palmer, “Archives 2.0.”

^11.Huvila, “Participatory Archive.”

^12.Bailey, Managing the Crowd.

^13. Taylor et al., Occupy!; Writers for the 99%, Occupying Wall Street; and Flank, Voices from the 99 Percent.

^14. Mason, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, 144.

^15. It should be noted that there have been numerous other community archives projects that have emerged within the Occupy movement throughout the USA and internationally. The focus here is on the archives working groups in New York and Philadelphia because the activities of these groups have been well documented, by themselves and by others. However, it is significant that a number of groups arose independently at an early stage in the Occupy movement, all recognizing the importance of collecting, preserving and using records of the movement to support current and future activism. See, for example, the archives projects at Occupy Boston, http://www.archive.occupyboston.org, http://www.wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde_to_Howard_Zinn_Library_(A_to_Z); Occupy Portland, http://www.ourschoolportland.org/Archive.html; Occupy Harvard, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/ ∼hua06012; Occupy Oral History in the UK, http://www.vahs.org.uk/2012/01/occupyoralhistory; and the 15M Archive in Madrid, http://www.archivosol15m.wordpress.com.

^16. There are no fixed and universally accepted definitions of the terms ‘community’, ‘archive’ and ‘community archive’. Therefore, it will be useful here to apply the broad and inclusive definitions suggested by Andrew Flinn, Mary Stevens and Elizabeth Shepherd: ‘A community, in short, is any group of people who come together and present themselves as such, and a “community archive” is the product of their attempts to document the history of their commonality.’ Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd, “Whose Memories, Whose Archives?” 75. Please see also Bastian and Alexander, Community Archives; Flinn, “Archival Activism”; Flinn, “An Attack on Professionalism and Scholarship?”; Flinn, “Community Histories, Community Archives”; and Flinn, “Other Ways of Thinking, Other Ways of Being.”

^17. Writers for the 99%, Occupying Wall Street.

^18.Dean, “Struggle for Occupy Archives”; and Evans, Perricci, and Roberts, “Why Archive?”

^19.http://www.occupyphillyga.net/groups/archives.

^20.Ng, “Public Forum on OWS Archives.”

^21. Information about the Occupy Philadelphia Archives Working Group, including the minutes of their meetings, is available on the group's website and Facebook page. http://www.occupyphillyga.net/groups/archives/docs; and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Philly-Archives-WG/255652524511510.

^22. Various discussions between members of the Occupy Wall Street Archives Working Group can be viewed on the group's website: http://www.nycga.net/groups/the-occupy-wallstreet-archives.

^23. The 15M Archive – a community archive project of the Indignados movement – provides another excellent example of the enthusiasm surrounding archival activity in recent protest movements. The group's website describes the project as: ‘self-financed and self-organized, operating in a horizontal and voluntary fashion. It is an integral part of the broader continuing 15M movement. It is not only an archive of activism, but also an activist archive.’ Lamarca, “Threatened Archive of Protest Movement.”

^24. Flinn and Stevens, “It is noh mistri, wi mekin histri,” 6.

^25. Forum discussion on the Occupy Wall Street Archives Working Group's website, ‘Occupy Wall Street becomes highly collectable.’ http://www.nycga.net/groups/the-occupy-wallstreet-archives.

^26. See note 5 above.

^27. See note 25 above.

^28.Samtani, “Anarchivists.”

^29.Dean, “Struggle for Occupy Archives.”

^30. See the meeting minutes of the Occupy Wall Street Working Group for Archives January 2, 2012. http://www.nycga.net/groups/the-occupy-wallstreet-archives/docs/.

^31. Evans, Perricci, and Roberts, “Why Archive?”

^32. See note 25 above.

^33. Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd, “Whose Memories, Whose Archives?” 80.

^34. See note 25 above.

^35. See note 31 above.

^36. Interview with Chela Scott Weber, 30 April 2012.

^37. Interview with Chela Scott Weber, 30 April 2012.

^38. Interview with members of the Occupy Philadelphia Archives Working Group, 19 May 2012.

^39. Interview with members of the Occupy Philadelphia Archives Working Group, 19 May 2012. See also the online catalogue for the Occupy Philadelphia collection. http://www.library.temple.edu/scrc/occupy-philadelphia-records.

^40. Mason, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere.

^41. See the Activist Archivists’ website: http://www.activist-archivists.org/wp/?page_id = 2.

^42. Interview with members of the Activist Archivists, 1 April 2012.

^43. See note 41 above.

^44. “The Activist Archivists and Witness.”

^45. “The Activist Archivists”

^46. See note 42 above.

^47. Ibid.

^48. Ibid.

^49. Ibid.

^50. Ibid.

^51.Ng, “OWS Archives Share Day.”

^52.Besser, “Archiving Large Swaths of User-Contributed Digital Content.”

^53. See, for example, Cook, “We are What We keep.”

^54. See note 42 above.

^55. See the Activist Archivists’ website: http://www.activist-archivists.org.

^56.Evans, “Archives of the People.”

^57. Bailey, Managing the Crowd, 130.

^58.Jimerson, “Embracing the Power of Archives.” Please see also Jimmerson. Archives Power.

^59. Huvila, “Participatory Archive,” 24.

^60. Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd, “Whose Memories, Whose Archives?”

^☆This paper is a revised version of the ARA FARMER Student Dissertation Prize 2013 winner.