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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Oct 13 | Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps | Film and discussion

Oct 13 | Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps | Film and discussion

Wall Street: Monet Never Sleeps (2010)

Time: Thursday, October 13 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Place: CGIS South Building, Room, S050 Harvard University (Map: http://goo.gl/UoiC1)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=244226975629516
Contact: boston [at] platypus1917 [dot] org

Battle on Wall Street? 

Part 1 of 2-part film screening series: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) 

"Want to know what the mother of all bubbles was? Came out of nowhere, by chance. They called it the Cambrian Explosion. It happened around 530 million years ago. And, over the next 70-80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated so fast that we came along, the human race. They still can't explain how that happened, except that it happened. Some people say it was by chance. Others, design. But who really knows?"

The recent #occupy protests depart significantly from the anti-war politics that has defined activism on the Left for the past decade. Slogans decrying corporate greed now dominate the picket signs that until recently were used to condemn U.S. imperialism. However, does this spreading protest movement signal a new era of activism in the U.S.? Or, are these recent demonstrations expressing old and familiar discontents? Perhaps, as the role of Adbusters suggests, something of the 1990s has come back into vogue, bringing back to the fore the age-old hatred of the bankers and impersonal financial institutions, and opposition to neoliberal globalization, now in crisis. The spirit of the 1999 Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization seems to have returned, with a vengeance. Please join Platypus in considering the historical sources of the ongoing anti-Wall Street protests through the lens of two recent films that highlight the popular imagination of contemporary capitalism and its discontents.