'occupy (the 99%)' - 30 October 2011 

Contemporary English painter Guy Denning publishes a blog entitled "A Drawing a Day." In it, he has extensively documented Occupy protests from around the world, often using photographs and news footage for reference, and isolating a single subject from among the crowd.


He emailed me today, and after (completely unnecessary) protestations that he was a visual artist, not a writer, and that it was probably best to just "share the artwork," articulated his thoughts on the Occupy drawings:


"All I was trying to do with the drawings was to take a more personal look at the people within the protests. The media so often have an agenda of portraying all such protest, particularly on western soil, as being chaotic violence and vandalism led by criminal extremists. I wanted to show that these protests were populated by ordinary people who are finding themselves in extraordinary times." 


As the West cheers populist movements like Arab Spring, it is interesting to see how uncomfortable we are with our own "uprisings." While perhaps not all of Occupy's demands are pragmatic  – or even possible – it is important that Americans continue to protect their right to organize. Check out Denning's blog, look into the faces of ordinary people, exercising their rights in extraordinary times, and be grateful for the discomfort our freedoms afford us.