PRESS: Quotation in News Article "Academia Uptown Reflect on Occupy Wall Street."

"Professor Gregory Baggett, who has previously taught at the New School and Columbia University, and is now a Black Studies professor at City College, also recognized the advantage in the movement’s amorphous nature.

Baggett, who admitted to being quite a shopper, recounted bumping into an OWS protest while leaving the Prada store in SoHo and joining the marchers as they walked to Washington Square Park with his shopping bags from high-end retail shops.

Baggett spoke of the difference of OWS to other social justice movements that may not have accepted protestors that don['t] not fit a certain model, notably people who can afford to shop at Prada. He said he didn’t anticipate marching that day, but felt comfortable in joining the group.

"There is an open enough space that you can accidently fall in,” he said of OWS.

Baggett also compared OWS to Bacon’s Rebellion, which attracted all classes of people, including slaves, indentured servants and the gentry, and sparked the American Revolution." 

OWS Teach-In, City College, CUNY, November 2011

COMMENT: I doubt with all sincerity if I presumed to argue that Bacon's Rebellion sparked the American Revolution, though I am willing to assert that it gave rise to American racist ideology. 

NOTE: I am currently rewriting the original OWS conference paper to examine the movements evolution or devolution since its first appearance in September 2011. The working title for that paper is "Adventures in Negative Space: Some Thoughts on OWS, Then and Now."

Marisol Rodriquez, "Academia Uptown Reflect on Occupy Wall Street"