“Never before in all history have the inequities and the momentums of unthinking money-power been more glaringly evident to so vastly large a number of now literate, competent, and constructively thinking all-around-the-world humans. There’s a soon-to-occur critical-mass moment when the intuition of the responsibly inspired majority of humanity, in contradistinction to the angered Luddites and avenging Robin Hoods, faced with comprehensive functional discontinuity of nationally contained techno-economic system, will call for and accomplish a world-around reorientation of our planetary affairs.”

Buckminster Fuller in 1983, from The Grunch of Giants.

 

 

Today is May Day, International Worker’s Day.  The Occupy Movement has called for a day of action and general strike worldwide today. Last December, Fast Company magazine asked me to photograph eight innovators from the Occupy Movement for their 2012 Innovators issue. The magazine’s editors included the Occupy Movement in the annual list that includes the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google,  ”for embodying all the traits that make a fast company.”

Before starting the story for FC, I went over to meet some of the people at the Occupy Hartford encampment near me.  The city removed them just 2 days later.

The Movement has seen it’s donations dwindle of late. It remains to be seen if the movement can regain the momentum it had in the last year.

Below, the March issue of Fast Company magazine.

Jan Wampler, MIT. The MIT architecture professor, along with student and alumni volunteers and Occupiers themselves, has helped design housing structures that can keep protesters warm in the winter.

Benjamin Phillips, Occupy Oakland. An Air Force veteran of the Iraq war, Phillips leverages his marketing and social-media expertise to facilitate accessible technology for all members of Occupy Oakland.

Emily Jacobi, Digital Democracy. With the OccupyVotes platform, Jacobi and her peers at Digital Democracy have created a platform that reveals the priorities of a movement that notoriously won’t list its demands.

Andy Dao and Ivan Cash, Occupy George. By stamping Occupy-related facts and figures on dollar bills, they show solidarity with the movement and annoy banks at the same time.

Malik Rahsaan, Occupy the Hood. Rahsaan started Occupy the Hood to get people of color actively involved in the Occupy movement, bringing community-level issues to a national stage.

Isaac Wilder, Free Network Foundation. The Free Network Foundation helps make the Internet and communication tools used by Occupy movements more efficient and accessible among their users, not controlled by a centralized power.

Shen Tong, Occupy Wall Street. A longtime veteran of social movements dating back to China’s Tianamen Sq., Tong helps influence OWS from a philosophical view.

Joan Donovan, Interoccupy. Donovan works on interoccupation communications, linking various local Occupy movements and connecting individual groups with celebrities, such as Sean Penn.

I would like to thank Fast Company’s creative team for thinking of me for this great assignment: Creative Director, Florian Bachleda, Director of Photography, Leslie Dela Vega, Photo Editor, Kathy Nguyen and Art Director Ted Keller.