As members of the OWS encampment in New York City head into what promises to be a brutal winter, activists with differing notions about where the movement should go next can all agree on one thing: survival.

Recent accounts of police brutality and daring acts of civil disobedience seem to have stirred little interest in the movement on the part of the mainstream press, so activists are looking to their time in the cold as an opportunity to strengthen the connections between Occupy encampments nationwide, and to dream, argue, plan and prepare for an all-out campaign to win the support of the American public next spring.

Details of the campaign will supposedly be released later this month, activists told The Guardian. — ARK

The Guardian:

Michael Premo, 29, an activist on the direct action and the outreach team, said the movement needed to reach out to different and more divergent groups. He compared the Occupy movement to the civil rights movement. “That was everything from electoral reform to complete separatism. You had W. E. B. Du Bois advocating integration and Booker T Washington arguing for separatism,” Premo said. “Du Bois and Washington were civil rights leaders on opposite sides of the black civil rights movement.

“If it’s going to include and never exclude people who feel disenfranchised by the current government system OWS can never have demands,” Premo said. “A certain segment of it can have demands. Even though I believe the movement is beyond electoral politics, some people may believe electoral politics is important.”

He said the winter would be a reflective time “to dream” and then the movement would launch its “spring offensive”.

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