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99 Nights with the 99 Percent
Occupy Wall Street was the biggest news story of 2011. Boston Phoenix staff writer Chris Faraone followed the movement like a storm chaser, standing out among some of the movement's most unique activist and journalistic voices. He is one of the rare few who gained the trust of the Occupiers as he blogged about OWS on a daily basis, from locations all across the country. But he also stepped back to investigate and analyze the protests from a bigger-picture perspective, through in-depth weekly features. This powerful analysis and insight is what fuels 99 Nights with the 99 Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution .
"99 Nights" features just-completed, unpublished work as well as many of Faraone's acclaimed Boston Phoenix features and profiles on the Occupy movement, streamlined into an engaging 224-page political travelogue, with exclusive photographs, illustrations and more.
As noted in a December 2011 Columbia Journalism Review profile of Faraone entitled "Movement Man," his approach to covering Occupy was wholly unique. He became "a one-man embedding full-time at Boston's Dewey Square encampment; visiting other movements around the country; juggling feature stories, blog posts, radio spots, and Twitter fights."
Beginning in September 2011, Faraone - a writer with numerous News and Investigative awards from the Association of Alternative News Media (AAN) and New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) - published a series of intricate Occupy portraits in the Phoenix , as he traveled across the country, touching down from Miami and Chicago to Seattle and Oakland . His work digs deep, explains Occupy operations in a variety of settings, and gets to know the characters that make the movement tick. Along the way, he landed nationwide exclusives, including a major scoop on an underground legion of police who support OWS.
Although Faraone is an unabashed left-winger, he writes with a reporter's objective, unflinching and investigative eye. Over the course of Occupy's first three months, he refused to play favorites, engaging and - at times - aggravating readers of all political stripes. For him it wasn't about taking sides - the fun was in digging up the roots of topics ranging from Paul Fetch , an accused thief who moved between camps; to C.T. Butler of Food Not Bombs , a seasoned activist who, inspired by Occupy, snapped back into revolutionary action. Also included as a 99 Nights bonus Faraone's award-winning 2008 Phoenix feature on "hactivist" organization Anonymous and its war on Scientology.
As Occupy Wall Street continues to grab front-page headlines throughout 2012, Chris Faraone's 99 Nights with the 99 Percent is required reading for anyone wishing to fully understand this enduring force for social change.
"99 Nights" features just-completed, unpublished work as well as many of Faraone's acclaimed Boston Phoenix features and profiles on the Occupy movement, streamlined into an engaging 224-page political travelogue, with exclusive photographs, illustrations and more.
As noted in a December 2011 Columbia Journalism Review profile of Faraone entitled "Movement Man," his approach to covering Occupy was wholly unique. He became "a one-man embedding full-time at Boston's Dewey Square encampment; visiting other movements around the country; juggling feature stories, blog posts, radio spots, and Twitter fights."
Beginning in September 2011, Faraone - a writer with numerous News and Investigative awards from the Association of Alternative News Media (AAN) and New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) - published a series of intricate Occupy portraits in the Phoenix , as he traveled across the country, touching down from Miami and Chicago to Seattle and Oakland . His work digs deep, explains Occupy operations in a variety of settings, and gets to know the characters that make the movement tick. Along the way, he landed nationwide exclusives, including a major scoop on an underground legion of police who support OWS.
Although Faraone is an unabashed left-winger, he writes with a reporter's objective, unflinching and investigative eye. Over the course of Occupy's first three months, he refused to play favorites, engaging and - at times - aggravating readers of all political stripes. For him it wasn't about taking sides - the fun was in digging up the roots of topics ranging from Paul Fetch , an accused thief who moved between camps; to C.T. Butler of Food Not Bombs , a seasoned activist who, inspired by Occupy, snapped back into revolutionary action. Also included as a 99 Nights bonus Faraone's award-winning 2008 Phoenix feature on "hactivist" organization Anonymous and its war on Scientology.
As Occupy Wall Street continues to grab front-page headlines throughout 2012, Chris Faraone's 99 Nights with the 99 Percent is required reading for anyone wishing to fully understand this enduring force for social change.
- GenresNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2012
About the author
Chris Faraone
6 books8 followersAuthor of 99 Nights with the 99 Percent. New book from Write to Power this June.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 27, 2012
A collection of "dispatches" from Occupy Boston, Occupy Wall Street and several other Occupies (Occupations?) Boston Phoenix reporter Chris Faraone attended this past fall and winter. It's long on the kind of detail you missed in so much of the reporting on Occupy, despite the amount of press coverage it generated, and it's short on big picture analysis, in part because it ends with Occupy kinda on hiatus rather than at an actual conclusion. It feels like prologue, but who knows if anything more will come of Occupy. I'll be expanding on this at length in an essay on my own site tomorrow. Mark your calendar.
July 25, 2024
A REPORTER CHRONICLES THREE MONTHS OF THE "OCCUPY" MOVEMENT IN SEVERAL CITIES,
Author Chris Faraone wrote in the first chapter of this 2012 book, "Since my job is to report on oppressed peoples... I wasn't totally surprised by the development (of OWS)... My first reaction to getting scooped was to skip my daily walk to work, jump in a taxi, and speed into the office to blast Occupy organizers for failing to float me a press release... Not that anything would have stopped me from covering them. I agreed with virtually everything that Occupy was throwing at the Wall---wealth disparity is out of hand, corporate lobbyists are crooked, those who plundered the financial system should be jailed or worse..."
He admits, "It took hundreds of conversations with Occupiers ... before I finally realized what's behind that mentality of Occupy adversaries. They're actually correct about one thing---Occupiers, along with anybody else who's cheering for change, really do have an ideal vision for how things should be." (Pg. 18-19)
He notes, "this group has its weaknesses... (the) biggest problem appears to be finding consensus among its small but philosophically contentious gang of intellectuals and egomaniacs. Meetings often become mired in bickering over processes, while the passive-aggressive tone that dominates (General Assemblies) could rival anything you've seen on 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians'..." (Pg. 57-58)
He observes that "this time Occupiers---joined on the front lines by hostile Ron Paul supporters---offered the closest thing to a significant third party presence that New Hampshire's ever seen." (Pg. 197) However, later he adds that these are "two factions that, while there's some common ground between them, are beginning to really loathe each other..." (Pg. 200)
This is a highly interesting "semi-outsider's" perspective on the early Occupy movement, and will be of considerable interest to anyone interested in progressive politics.
Author Chris Faraone wrote in the first chapter of this 2012 book, "Since my job is to report on oppressed peoples... I wasn't totally surprised by the development (of OWS)... My first reaction to getting scooped was to skip my daily walk to work, jump in a taxi, and speed into the office to blast Occupy organizers for failing to float me a press release... Not that anything would have stopped me from covering them. I agreed with virtually everything that Occupy was throwing at the Wall---wealth disparity is out of hand, corporate lobbyists are crooked, those who plundered the financial system should be jailed or worse..."
He admits, "It took hundreds of conversations with Occupiers ... before I finally realized what's behind that mentality of Occupy adversaries. They're actually correct about one thing---Occupiers, along with anybody else who's cheering for change, really do have an ideal vision for how things should be." (Pg. 18-19)
He notes, "this group has its weaknesses... (the) biggest problem appears to be finding consensus among its small but philosophically contentious gang of intellectuals and egomaniacs. Meetings often become mired in bickering over processes, while the passive-aggressive tone that dominates (General Assemblies) could rival anything you've seen on 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians'..." (Pg. 57-58)
He observes that "this time Occupiers---joined on the front lines by hostile Ron Paul supporters---offered the closest thing to a significant third party presence that New Hampshire's ever seen." (Pg. 197) However, later he adds that these are "two factions that, while there's some common ground between them, are beginning to really loathe each other..." (Pg. 200)
This is a highly interesting "semi-outsider's" perspective on the early Occupy movement, and will be of considerable interest to anyone interested in progressive politics.
February 2, 2013
Take a journey with me into imagination land. Close your eyes. Think back to last March, "temperature check" was a phrase applied to turkey thermometers and self help meetings. Consensus training was a google search still predominately linked to C.T. Butler, and the phrase "pitching a tent" still made folks giggle on the T... aaahhh those were the days. What if you'd never heard of Occupy Wallstreet? What if you'd taken a knock to the noggin and you woke up on March 27, 2012. Not only would you be waking up on the day that Phoenix staffer Chris Faraone's book 99 Nights with the 99%: Dispatches From the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution will be released to the nationally to retailers, and, you'd also be in luck.
While Faraone's "Dispatches" won't be the only source of information on Occupy Boston or Occupy Wallstreet by any means. 99 Nights with the 99% is an excellent jumping off point for you, our hypothetical coma patient. It's a bummer you missed out on @Fara1's often contentious twitter escapades while he traipsed through ten separate "tent cities" to get the skinny on the Occupy movement. Within the first dozen pages of this occu-page-turner you'll learn fun facts about Occupy's media operation, protest movements past and present. Not to mention interactions with the local constabulary, as well as insights into communities nation-wide prior to Occupy, well, Occupying.
The really interesting thing about "99 Nights" or "Occu-Book" as I like to call it; is that it isn't just a collection of articles and insights from the "Movement Man" himself Chris Faraone (Columbia Journalism Review Dec. 2011). I could go back into the Boston Phoenix archives for that, or just search "Chris Faraone" in google, go ahead, try it... right now.... What you'll get when you read "99 Nights with the 99%" is two stories. Yes, you will read the often foul-mouthed narratives of Occupy from the trenches, as balls deep as you can get on a shoe-string budget. Even if you were a coma patient during Occupy, you'll also get the story of a man struggling between a Stockholm Syndrome-esque love/hate relationship with a budding movement and the makings of a world class journalist.
While Faraone's "Dispatches" won't be the only source of information on Occupy Boston or Occupy Wallstreet by any means. 99 Nights with the 99% is an excellent jumping off point for you, our hypothetical coma patient. It's a bummer you missed out on @Fara1's often contentious twitter escapades while he traipsed through ten separate "tent cities" to get the skinny on the Occupy movement. Within the first dozen pages of this occu-page-turner you'll learn fun facts about Occupy's media operation, protest movements past and present. Not to mention interactions with the local constabulary, as well as insights into communities nation-wide prior to Occupy, well, Occupying.
The really interesting thing about "99 Nights" or "Occu-Book" as I like to call it; is that it isn't just a collection of articles and insights from the "Movement Man" himself Chris Faraone (Columbia Journalism Review Dec. 2011). I could go back into the Boston Phoenix archives for that, or just search "Chris Faraone" in google, go ahead, try it... right now.... What you'll get when you read "99 Nights with the 99%" is two stories. Yes, you will read the often foul-mouthed narratives of Occupy from the trenches, as balls deep as you can get on a shoe-string budget. Even if you were a coma patient during Occupy, you'll also get the story of a man struggling between a Stockholm Syndrome-esque love/hate relationship with a budding movement and the makings of a world class journalist.
March 21, 2014
Good read if you aren't from the Boston area.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews