This image was made in October 2011, just as Occupy Wall Street was flowering in NYC. It is based on the movement’s Declaration, written by consensus and agreed upon by the NYC General Assembly of OWS in the first weeks of the occupation. The inner circle is the list of grievances from that document, and the outer two rings of themes were decided on through a crowd-sourced editing process that took place in Zuccotti Park. Hundreds of people contributed to this image, and it was often distributed as an outreach tool for OWS, as an answer to questions like “But what is this movement about?” Read how Rachel Schragis created this illustration in her interview, from 2011 in Truth Out:
“This image is profoundly not a solution: to either the injustices we face or my own (infinitely smaller) creative concerns. It is a statement of the problem, and its material being does not reflect the world we want: to start, it is drawn with (toxic) sharpies and distributed through the (unsustainably powered) internet. And the reality it states, let us not forget, is pretty bleak. I dream about making spaces that inspire justice – not just collections of words that show what's wrong. And isn't this really what OWS is about, at its core? Believing that if we start by stating the problems correctly, a better world than we can currently envision is possible. Demanding that we dream up that world, and build that dream. “
