Occupy Forum with Pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement & Beyond: How can the Occupy Movement Keep Our Eyes on the Prize for the long term?

Between 1955 and 1968, the Civil Rights Movement challenged the nation to live up to the democratic principles it professed to hold achieving successes the world once thought impossible. On the eve of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Phil Hutchings (1968 Chair SNCC- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Carol Ruth Silver (Freedom Rider jailed for forty days) and David Hartsough (Lunch counter sit-in & bus boycott) will help us understand the strategic brilliance and extreme courage of those who fought for equal rights, voting rights, and integration. Withstanding constant harassment, arrests, beatings, arson, hateful brutality and murder, the Council of Federated Organizations (SNCC, CORE, the NAACP, and the SCLC) sustained a shared vision

. What was it like to be part of Freedom Summer, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sit-ins, marches, and other non-violent civil resistance? What kind of preparation was involved? How were the networks that sustained the movement organized? What was the role of the Black Church? Of the Jewish community? How were the legislative achievements (and their subsequent enforcement which led eventually to a tenuous equality) accomplished? Today, we experience glaring economic inequality, de facto segregation, and mass incarceration of the African American community that some have even dubbed the “New Jim Crow." How can the Occupy movement carry the torch forward from the pioneers of the civil rights movement to achieve full and lasting civil and economic equality for all?