ABSTRACT
Throughout the final months of work on this manuscript the dynamics of social movement activity shifted and shifted again. The stage seemed to widen with debate about the merit of organizing practices during the US electoral cycle in 2008. Throughout the period, regular people organized any number of events—from stoop sales to bike rides. The second weekend in August 2008, two groups in New York organized street parties. The first party began on the West Side of the City, where it ebbed and flowed, zigged and zagged from Battery Park City, through a peace labyrinth near Ground Zero, off to the Staten Island Ferry, and eventually into Brooklyn. Later that night, a second street party began at Union Square. There activists, borrowing a tactic from early RTS, descended into the subway, jumped on the L train traveling east out to Brooklyn, where they ascended from the underground in Williamsburg and transformed Bedford Avenue into a makeshift street party. An RTS veteran of its first actions passed out free beer from a grocery cart, carrying drinks and a sound system. And music filled the air. Not long after, the police arrived, arrested the DJ, and tried to clear the streets as the two groups played chase all night long.
