It’s been more than seven months since the Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York’s Zucotti Park and gave us the class warfare rallying cry of “We are the 99%.” And while our nation’s downtown parks are mostly free of the squalid encampments, the movement is hoping to centralize its efforts online at its new site, Occupy.com. According to its creators Occupy.com “is a new media channel that will amplify the voices of Occupy.”

The site is being bankrolled by film producer Larry Taubman, who reportedly provided $130,000 in seed money for the project as well as kicking in “a large confidential sum” for the domain name Occupy.com. In addition to the ironic fact that Occupy.com is made possible by benefactors of the 1%, the site faces a number of challenges.

As a de-centralized movement which, during its heyday, relied on the General Assemblies (GAs) and “down twinkles” to make decisions, how can Occupy.com become the central hub for the movement? As the site’s About page explains, “There is no GA or Spokes Council overseeing us, but we are morally accountable to the movement as a whole.” Whatever that means.

The site’s other core challenge is how does a movement that began offline with a very aggressive physical element move to the real world? To be sure, the Occupation leveraged social media to let the world know about its marches, encampments, and run-ins with law enforcement, but in each case they were connected to action taking place offline.



