In the Great Recession (2007-2009), Wall Street crashed the economy but got rewarded with billions of dollars in government bailouts, while millions of Americans—unemployed, homeless, desperate—had nowhere to go for help. When a small group of people responded by setting up camp in a New York City park, their protest ignited one of the great democratic movements in U.S. history.
Frann Michel talks with Michelle Fawcett, director of the documentary Occupy Wall Street: An American Dream (2025, 51 min.). A personal narrative with footage from travels to 42 occupations in 27 states, the film reveals the unseen diversity and development of the movement over the course of its first year. Laid-off factory workers in the Rust Belt, Indigenous activists in the Southwest fighting another kind of occupation, recent graduates saddled with debt and no jobs, and homeless veterans of America's forever wars kicked to the curb, the occupiers transformed their despair into hope by forging a new American Dream together on street corners all over the country. Along the way, they flipped the script from austerity to inequality, from reform to revolution, and from fear to power, heralding a new era in American politics.
The film contextualizes Occupy Wall Street in historical perspective and captures the joy and challenges, humor and love of a movement that Professor Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Poor People’s Movements, called, “one of a series of movements that has episodically changed history.”
Occupy Wall Street: An American Dream will premiere on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, the 14th anniversary of the movement, at The People's Forum in New York City. Register HERE for information on the livestream.
For more information about the Occupy USA Today media project, visit https://occupyusatoday.com/.
Image: text: Occupy USA Today text in a road route sign: 99 percent text: "You can't really know where you're going... image: low-angle photo of people (young black man in foreground, two white women in background) outside, smiling, with upraised hands, and a sign: Direct Action Gets the Goods text: ...until you know where you've been" - Maya Angelou. Photo by Michelle Fawcett; used with permission.