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Occupy Holiday Survival Guide

Occupy Holiday Survival Guide
Fri, 4/13/2012
This article originally appeared on Goldenbear TV

Occupy Wall Street commenced last Fall just in time for the holiday season, and many occupiers prepared for their annual pilgrimages back home to face a barrage of questions from their families. This creative short anticipated this quandary, serving as a primer for broaching these issues over Thanksgiving turkey.

Actor Chris Keener plays an occupier, his mother, his father, his brother-in-law and his grandmother, Nutty Professor-style, and explains to each how they each have a horse in this race, whether they like it or not, because the deck is stacked in favor of the 1%.

"Occupy Wall Street: A Holiday Survival Guide was a collaboration between a number of DC-based filmmakers and creatives," writer Rob Shore said. "Though we all had different jobs, politics, and backgrounds, the best of what Occupy represented resonated deeply with us. We were frustrated as those who felt threatened by the movement began to spin its participants and goals as a bunch of police car-shitting hippies bent on destruction. As gainfully employed ("Occuployed," one might say) 20 and 30-somethings, our presence at Occupy DC was limited to evenings and weekends and we wanted to find a way to have a broader impact. We used our collective talents as filmmakers, actors, and communication experts to craft a strategic message template packaged in a short season-appropriate comedy that many people could identify with: going home for the holidays and arguing around the dinner table. The message template conforms to the best practices in the field of strategic communication: values prime the audience for what they are about to see and tell them "what this is about;" metaphors help to explain complex phenomena in ways that are more easily digestible; and solutions leave people with a sense that something specific and achievable can be done. We hope the video and its message can help breathe new life into the movement this spring."

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Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

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Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

Posted 3 weeks 2 days ago

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

Posted 1 month 2 weeks ago

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Posted 2 weeks 2 days ago

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Posted 3 weeks 4 days ago

Journalists have a responsibility to plainly tell the truth about how truly different the Democrats and the Republicans are today, especially with both democracy and the rule of law at stake this November.

Posted 2 days 16 hours ago

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.