Voices for the Future -- Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy

A Conversation with Author and Journalist Michael Levitin

Michael Levitin

Voices for the Future is a podcast series that I co-host with my collaborator Anodea Judith.

The next program is today Monday, September 16 at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific with author and journalist Michael Levitin. The name of the program is Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy, which is also the name of Michael's latet book..

You can attend for free on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82305884113

Michael Levitin is a journalism professor, author, and journalist who has reported from all over the world, and has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Financial Times, Newsweek, Time, Los Angeles Times, and Forbes, among other publications.

Michael's book, Generation Occupy: Reawakening American Democracy, appeared in hardcover in 2021 and paperback in 2023. He was co-founding editor of The Occupied Wall Street Journal and Occupy.com, and founding editor of the Prague Literary Review. He is an assistant professor of journalism at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We'll be talking with Michael on the 13th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Michael was there, and wrote about it as it occurred and captivated a nation with its slogan of "We are the 99%." 

With a presidential election coming up in November, and with the future of democracy on the ballot, we thought it would be good to explore some of the issues that have led to why democracy is in crisis in the U.S.--and this is what we'll be talking about with Michael.

Occupy Wall Street didn't happen in a vacuum. Decades of deregulation, especially in the financial sector, led up to it. The deregulation of Wall Street caused the financial crash of 2008-09, one which many people still are feeling the reverberations to this day, and remain angry about what they feel is a rigged system. 

Donald Trump rode that anger to the White House in 2016, and he is hoping to ride that anger back in again. Yet at the same time, Occupy Wall Street woke up a countervailing force, creating a movement of people and politicians who are oriented towards making American society more fair, just, and most importantly, more democratic.

It's important to understand this backstory of how we have got to where we are today, and Michael Levitin will explain in depth the past, present, and future--and with it, explore what a more hopeful world could look like. 

I hope you can join us for this dynamic conversation. Again, it takes place today, Monday, September 16 at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82305884113