Book Review: The Power of Place, Democracy, and Political Change A Review Essay of Beyond Zucotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space

The first time I visited the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, I stopped at the “Information Desk” and chatted with a young woman named Emily—who had taken a few days off from her job in a fast food restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri, to travel across the country and join the movement. Her job was to tell visitors, including swarms of reporters, why they were there. It was late September 2011. Three years had passed since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, setting off a chain of events; including an economy in free-fall, two massive government bail-outs of the financial industry, millions of homes in foreclosure, and unemployment for millions more working and middle-class Americans. So far, the only organized opposition to the way the government was dealing with this crisis had come from the right, in the voice of the Tea Party—whose core belief was that the government was the enemy and the only solution to inequality was to slash government spending and force people to fend for themselves. I asked Emily how she saw the nascent Occupy movement’s relationship to the Tea Party, specifically the shared disillusionment with our government, and I was not sure who was more confused: Emily, by my question, or me, by her blank stare.