Disrupt (v) : to interrupt (an event, activity, or process) by causing a disturbance or problem; to drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)
In September of 2011, thousands of protestors occupied Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, protesting Wall Street’s role in the 2008 financial crisis and decades of inequality leading up to it. The media wrote it off as a disorganized street party because of the costumes, drums, and even paper-mâché unicorns, but in reality, it was a deliberate protest with a history substantially longer than realized. Claire Tancons traces the carnival-esque tactics of the movement all the way back to slave societies in the Americas, where the drama and spectacle of this protest were often a tool used to attract attention from people with no formal political power. OWS was evicted two months in, two days before its planned Day of Action. It never made a single concrete demand, which critics used to dismiss it entirely. But the 1% versus 99% framing it popularized genuinely shifted how Americans talked about inequality, and the organizing models it developed influenced basically every major left movement that came after it. Tancons’ piece is worth reading not just as analysis but as a primary source — she was writing in real time, from inside the movement’s own cultural logic, which makes it a different and more honest document than most of what got published about OWS at the time.
The Women’s Day Off on October 24, 1975 was a monumental moment in Icelandic (women’s) history. The Committee for the Women’s Day Off was founded in June 1975. In March 1976, the Committee gave their Private Papers to the Women’s History Archive along with what was left from their fundraising efforts. Below is an example off the material kept at the archives, a handout from 1975.
95% of Iceland’s women did not go to work. They didn’t cook or clean or look after children. They gathered in town squares and visible public spaces around the nation, with around 25,000 in Reykjavík alone. The collective argument was that the women did work. paid and unpaid, but invisible from the infrastructure that held Icelandic society together, and never acknowledged by society. They called it Kvennafrí. Women’s Day Off. The newspapers called it the Long Friday. By the end of it, the country had a pretty good sense of what women were actually worth.
Women in office and retail work earned roughly 73 percent of what their male counterparts made. Women in manual labor earned 30,000 króna less per month than male workers doing equivalent jobs. Women working on farms — doing the same physical labor as their husbands — were assigned an official annual wage valuation of 175,000 króna, less than a member of parliament earned in a single month. And in industries like fish processing, women and men sometimes worked side by side at the same table doing the same tasks, separated only by their placement in different, lower-paid wage categories.
Beneath this was a structural problem; women were summoned when convenient, and dismissed when not, while being consistently undervalued in all negotiations and bargaining agreements around wages and overtime pay. Women occupied the bottom of every tier of the tiered wage system. Ultimately, sausages, an easily made food, were made available hurriedly and distributed by men around the nation, often referred to as a running joke. The speeches of the rally ranged across unpaid domestic work, wages, international solidarity, and disarmament. They insisted the goal was not to push men aside but to achieve equality and to solve societal problems together. Facts and figures backed their argument, emphasizing how different the world will be when women govern it alongside men, rather than under them.
In December 1828, roughly 400 women walked off the looms of the Cocheco Manufacturing Company in Dover, New Hampshire. They marched around the mill quadrangle with banners, signs, and loud, empowering music. The local paper, the Dover Enquirer, responded with contempt, calling the action “one of the most disgusting scenes ever witnessed” and dismissing the workers’ grievances as purely imaginary. It was the first recorded strike by women in United States history. And it almost didn’t happen at all.
When the Dover Cotton Factory opened in the 1810s under founders John Williams and Isaac Wendell, it operated under a paternalistic but somewhat livable arrangement. Farm girls were recruited from across New Hampshire and southern Maine with promises of good wages, boarding houses, and moral supervision, 10 PM curfews, mandatory church attendance, and an illness fund. Mill work was, briefly, considered a respectable path to financial independence for women who had almost no other routes to it. That shifted dramatically in 1828, when a Boston-installed agent named James Curtis took over. Curtis cut hourly pay from 58 cents a day to 53 cents while simultaneously raising production quotas and increasing loom worker speeds. Workers were paid in company scrip, redeemable only at the factory store, where prices were inflated, and accounts were routinely falsified. Talking on the floor was forbidden. A 12½-cent “lateness” fee was imposed. Joining a union was cause for immediate dismissal. On December 30, 1828, about 400 of the 800 mill girls walked out. The women didn’t slip quietly out the door; they marched, with banners and music, making their dissent visible in a town that had never seen anything like it. The strike failed. The women returned to work three days later, having won nothing. Curtis remained an agent until 1834, when he resigned — not because the workers forced him out, but apparently on his own terms. A second turnout in 1834 also failed.
“When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands.”
unnamed worker
On August 4, 1946, over 1,000 delegates united in Newtown Market Square, Johannesburg. This meeting place was chosen because no hall in the city was large enough to hold them, since no hall was open to Black Africans. The conference brought speaker after speaker to the podium, advocating for a general strike of all African workers within the Witwatersrand gold mines, beginning August 12, in demand of a minimum wage of 10 shillings a day. After years of attempted negotiations with the Chamber of Mines, the African Mine Workers’ Union was dismissed, and met with silence from the Chamber’s secretary, who had also instructed staff to ignore all Union communications. Between 75,000 and 100,000 workers walked off the job, which the state responded to with mass arrests, baton charges, and bayonets, transporting workers back underground in mass numbers. Policy brutality reached a bloody climax on a peaceful march from the East Rand to Johannesburg on Tuesday, 13 August. Police opened fire on the procession, and a number of workers were killed, collapsing the movement as a whole. Even though the mine workers did not achieve their set goal, they still disrupted South African political life by destroying its credibility and publicly questioning its authority. The apartheid states consultative body for Black South Africans never met again, but within 3 years, the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League adopted the “Programme of Action”, following the mineworkers’ lead through turning toward mass struggle. Although the 1946 strikers did not exactly achieve their desired outcome, they paved the way for the 1952 Defiance Campaign, the 1960 uprisings, and the eventual emergence of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Nothing in the French government anticipated what happened on November 17, 2018. Truck drivers, nurses, store owners, retirees, and farmers were among the hundreds of thousands of common people who put on their bright yellow high-visibility jackets and ventured out into the streets. Roundabouts were blocked. They marched along the Champs-Élysées carrying hand-painted signs that read, “We can’t live like this anymore,” in a dozen different ways. The movement was incredibly unique because it lacked a leader and unity as it began as shared anger on social media. This then spread to a petition against a carbon fuel tax launched by a small cosmetics company owner, Priscilla Ludovsky, which then exploded into French streets when people realized they were not alone. The movement’s chaos was rooted in its lack of a leader, part of its genius that allowed people from the far left and far right to march side by side. The shared experience of the rising cost of living with stagnat wages inoted rural workers with suburban business owners in the fight against the contemotuous government. The jacket worn by protestors also became symbolic; every driver in France is legally required to keep one in their car (they cost practically nothing), and when worn in protest it turned an entire nation of ordinary people into a very visible unified force that could not be dismissed.
What triggered the movement was President Emmanuel Macron’s fuel tax increase, a carbon levy framed as environmental policy but inevitably another cost pushed onto people who could least afford it: those in rural areas without access to public transport. The irony was that the president had abolished France’s wealth tax on the right, now taxing the diesel tank of the single mother driving 45 minutes to her minimum wage job. The demands that emerged went well beyond fuel. The people urged for the reinstatement of the solidarity wealth tax Macron had scrapped, a higher minimum wage, proportional representation in parliament, and a new democratic mechanism called the référendum d’initiative citoyenne, a citizens’ initiative that would give ordinary people direct legislative power.
These protest sites were met with armed riot police with flash-ball launchers and string-ball grenades. During the duration of the protests, around 27,000 people were injured, including around 2,000 police officers. 12,000 civilians were arrested, with close to 400 imprisoned. The protests did lead to Macron cancelling the fuel tax increases that triggered the movement, then launching a national consultation process, which dispersed billions in wage concessions, forcing him to acknowledge the gap between the French governing body and ordinary workers. The movement’s cultural and political legacy forced the question of economic inequality, asking for whom the system is actually built. Priscilla Ludovsky, the woman credited for launching the original petition, went from small business owner to training for political office, leading many Yellow Vesit representative to run in municipal elections. For the duration of a year-long movement, protesters showed in high-visibility vests to say: we see the system clearly now, and we refuse to accept it. A jacket that costs ten euros, worn by millions, that made a government cancel its policies and a president spend years trying to explain himself.
In Ecosystm’s “Key Tech Trends & Disruptions in 2026,” the AI experimentation period is officially over, and the disruption is arriving not just in one way but in multiple ways: agentic AI systems are no longer just providing answers but running entire business processes independently; Small Language Models are now outperforming their bloated general-purpose competitors in industries such as healthcare and finance; an astonishing 95% of Gen AI pilots have failed to deliver real revenue and are now requiring a brutal ROI reckoning for organizations still stuck in proof-of-concept land; synthetic data is quietly becoming a strategic necessity for organizations whose real-world data is too scarce, sensitive, or biased to be useful; and AI sovereignty, or keeping data, compute, and infrastructure within national borders, is no longer just a compliance exercise but a legitimate source of competitive advantage. The takeaway is clear: the organizations restructuring around these disruptions right now are going to define their industries; everyone else is just running out of runway.
This academic study of the Argentine sex workers’ union examines their movement and its power despite the seeming impossibility of organizing. The authors, Kate Hardy and Katie Cruz, argue that the secret was effective organizing: building solidarity through emotion, intimacy, care, and connection rather than through traditional union structures that lack these mechanisms. AMMAR, founded in 1995, disrupted practically every assumption about who could organize, how labor movements worked, and redefined what constitutes a “worker”. A majority of these workers were street-based sex workers who faced intense social stigma and were often criminalized. This new model of organizing was focused on radical acts of care as opposed to the dominant unionization based on shared employers. The union walked through city streets providing condoms and food to other women on the streets, as well as threw parties, gave thoughtful gifts, and most importantly, showed up for one another consistently. They dreamt of transforming street environments to one fostering solidarity, inclusivity, and respect. This disruption was not only structural but psychological, as women who had internalized incredibly deep shame and isolation were transformed into political subjects who identified openly and collectively as workers, with 84.9% of surveyed members adopting the identity of “sex worker” over “prostitute,” deliberately rejecting victim politics in favor of labor identity. AMMAR’s advocacy contributed directly to the abolition of the legal codes that allowed police to arrest sex workers without trial (edictos policiales) in Buenos Aires in 1998. The union also secured access to healthcare, even though the public healthcare system was under extreme stress and strain due to economic crises during this time. The unionizing of AMMAR showed proof of the ability to organize and gain collective power across Latin America, even within stigmatized and legally unprotected worker communities. The emphasis here on the human connection of care was the driving force of these movements as opposed to the margins of resistance.
“At the beginning, we had the mentality they’d taught us, that women are made for the home, to take care of the children and to cook, and that they aren’t capable of assimilating other things, of a social, union or political nature, for example. But necessity made us organize.”
Domitila Barrios De Chungara
Domitila Barrios De Chungara was a Bolivian woman born and raised in the Catavi mining community, Siglo XX, which she eventually returned to later in life. Her trajectory illuminates the exploitation of the mining industry and its workforce. After losing her father due to political persecution, and her mother when she was 9 years old, she was responsible for raising her four sisters into adulthood. She eventually married a miner returning to her home community, which enabled her to emerge as a prominent organizer within Siglo XX. She mobilized women into an active political force against the struggles of Bolivian tin workers. Her testimony, Si me permiten hablar, serves as a very rare first-hand account of life in the mines from a female, working-class perspective. The conditions she described were incredibly severe and exploitative, resulting in harm not just to miners, but to their wives and children as well. Mining contributed to about 60% of the Bolivian national income, with the second largest contributor being the exploitative oil industry. Public mining corporations employed 35,000 people in state mines, and an equal number were employed privately. The conditions were extremely dangerous, as marked by explosions, accidents, and constant physical and mental degradation. Workers in communities like Siglo XX lived in company-owned housing, which required widows of deceased miners to relocate within 90 days of passing. They lacked clean running water, basic infrastructure was outdated and deteriorating, and they shared unclean bathroom facilities. It was these conditions that Domitila Barrios de Chungara helped found the Housewives Committee of Siglo XX in 1961, organizing women to launch strikes, block roads, and confront soldiers and higher-ups. In 1977, they launched a hunger strike that grew from four women to hundreds of supporters across the nation, which placed pressure on the dictatorship to return previously exiled union leaders. De Chungara’s organizing demonstrated women’s ability to serve as political actors, showcasing the ability to form resistance withing working class women to fight the conditions of poverty perpetuated by the government and corporations. Her testimony emphasized the need to challenge, disrupt, and dismantle inequitable systems that continue to harm civilians as consequences of capitalist accumulation.
“While macroeconomic policies and strategies are put forward as– and are assumed to be– gender-neutral, they often conceal a hidden gender bias with a resultant negative effect on women.”
Tang Nain, 1992
As described by Nain, Caribbean policy formation has placed women at a significant disadvantage compared to their male counterparts. UNICEF studies supported this and recognized that among impoverished communities, women and children were impacted much more disproportionately than men. The Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era called for an understanding of women’s reproductive capacity as well as their gender-specific responsibility of housework and childcare, factors not understood in typical mainstream market understandings. These women also argued that cutbacks in the healthcare sector disproportionately impact female populations due to reproductive care cutbacks. Furthermore, as women are a crucial function in the industry, they were harmed financially by these cutbacks as their hours and wages declined, and many were laid off. This was particularly prominent in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, especially in times of crisis when attempting to settle national debt. In Jamaica and Guyana, rising taxes and fees created significant barriers to women securing education and employment, as education systems were underfunded, also curbing the supply of female teachers, as they made up the majority of educational professionals. In Guyana, the state’s failure to provide potable water placed responsibility on women, as they had to seek out safe water from springs due to their household responsibilities. These policy implications had incredibly uneven consequences on women, sparking unification movements and protests against their implementation. In 1991, at the West Indian Commission, the women’s movement produced a paper calling on the Caribbean governments to quantify women’s work. At the Women’s Economic Conference of 1992, the main issues of structural adjustment were addressed. These women lobbied and protests asserting that the state to prioritize health and education for the entirety of its people. They brought attention to the fact that repaying foreign debt was a more pressing cause than addressing the basic needs of Caribbean women. They argued that consultation with citizens must occur prior to addressing international debt. Joan French, presenter at the Regional Economic Conference, described that the state’s primary responsibility was to ensure the educational, health, recreation, social, and reproductive needs of the population are met wholly. They argued for recognition of the unpaid and overworked labor reserve within women’s households and public spheres, emphasizing focus on humanity, especially during times of crisis. Structural adjustment policies across the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, disproportionately disrupted women’s lives by cutting healthcare, education, and public services while increasing taxes and debt repayment pressures, intensifying their unpaid domestic burdens and economic insecurity. This inequity sparked organized resistance, as women mobilized to demand recognition of their unpaid labor and to challenge governments’ prioritization of foreign debt over social welfare.
In this chapter, some of the major issues relating to gender and social policy in an international perspective are outlined, and an analytical framework is suggested that might help to forge policies. Ruth Pearson addresses the implications of war or conflict on women, focusing on women’s role as the “reproducer”. Pearson addresses the dual meaning of this terminology: both the biological process and the process of domestic labor. She describes how women’s sexuality is often constrained during times of global insecurity, as the conditions that they enjoy or allow sexual activity are limited because of patriarchal gender relations. Additionally womens bodies become a means of control during times of conflict and often are taken advantage of through assault or rape as ameans to further strategic or political ends. This is representative of patriarchal means of control and military action used in Uganda in the 1980’s, in East Bengal in 1968, and countless other times. Rape and other sexual humiliation and torture have become commonplace in many countries around the world presenting the debate about the morality of bearing children as a product of rape. Often religion plays a crucial role in these decisions and women are pressured to carry the child to term and care for it in a safe loving and nurturing manner but social policies and more recent campaigns have been enacted to protest women’s bodily autonomy and support individual decisions regarding reproductive health and care. This chapter as a whole addresses the need for social and economic policy to not use women as the source or instrument to pursue certain priorities or agendas and promote the analysis of gender relations, intersectionality and legitimate policy objectives.
In the 1970’s, the Italian campaign, Wages for Housework, emerged as an incredibly disruptive intervention to feminist politics as well as economic theory. Martina Gabrielli analyzes how the movement went above and beyond demanding financial compensation for domestic labor, as the movement challenged capitalism’s definitions of value, work, and productivity. The movement questioned mainstream understandings of “work” and sought answers as to why domestic labor and housework were unpaid, exemplifying society’s inability to see value in predominantly female roles of reproductive work. Before the rise of the movement, domestic labor was treated as a private responsibility, undeserving of being recognized as economic activity, as it was often viewed as a labor of love and expression of femininity outside the realm of wages and markets. Within numerous feminist movements, the common solution to female oppression was smooth integration into paid work and equal access to employment opportunities, but neglected social reproduction: the unpaid work of cleaning, childcare, cooking, and emotional support that enabled (often husbands, or male) wage labor. The movement argued that capitalism succeeds due to its equal dependence on unpaid reproductive labor and factory production. The debate sparked conversation about exploitation, which had previously never been thought of occurring inside the home, as it was traditionally seen as apolitical. The peak activity and influence were during 1972 and 73 were Dallas Costa released E Sovversione Sociale, a document that delves into the disproportionate burden of domestic labor on women, and argued that even women with jobs outside the home shoulder the bulk of household responsibilities. The main framework within the women’s capitalist division of labor reinforces the notion that women’s extended familial duties encompassing emotional and caregiving responsibilities are deemed not worthy of being paid, akin to wage labor. This position diverges from the dominant promotion of female integration into the workforce, as it focuses on predating the introduction of wages for reproductive jobs. The Lotta Feminista’s activism rejects the capitalist system, which has centered the monetization of predominantly male productive labor and prompted the centering of women’s reproductive labor in the paid workforce.
Raheel Hayats essay looks at an important time for the Zapatista movement. This was after the murder of José Luis Solís López, also known as Galeano in 2014. He was a teacher, with the Zapatistas. State-backed paramilitary forces killed him in Chiapas. They did this as part of a campaign to stop the Zapatistas and other indigenous people from being independent, with the goal to make it easier for companies to take the resources from the area without any problems. The Zapatista movement is still fighting against this. The attack on the school and health clinic showed how the Mexican government uses violence and controls what people see in the media to hurt communities that are trying to be independent. They also get some peasant groups to work with them. The Zapatistas did not fight back with violence, instead they wanted justice to be done in their way. They did not want to use violence like the government. The essay describes how when Subcomandante Marcos appeared to die after Galeano was murdered it was not a sign that the movement was weak, it was proof that the movement was strong. Subcomandante Marcos was a person who helped tell people outside of the movement what was going on. He was also getting in the way of people seeing the real heart of the movement, which is made up of a lot of different indigenous people working together. The movement is really about these people, not just, about Subcomandante Marcos. By stepping aside and elevating indigenous leadership, the Zapatistas demonstrated that their power lies not in charismatic figures but in deeply rooted, bottom-up institutions of governance, education, and care, showing that they are stronger than ever as a collective challenge to capitalism, state violence, and neoliberal exploitation. This moment was deeply disruptive because it overturned the state’s expectation that repression, assassination, and the removal of a visible leader would fracture the movement, instead revealing a form of resistance that thrives precisely by refusing hierarchy, spectacle, and violent retaliation.
In the last five hundred years, virtually all traditional patterns of life and livelihood have been disrupted and reconstructed. The world and world’s peoples have been shaken up and remade.
Samuel Bowles
Capitalism’s prioritization of profit and accumulation through competition over stability and social well-being undermines security, harms the natural environment, divides familial networks, and destabilizes income. Long working hours and the ever-changing job market strain relationships within families, making parents increasingly more reliant on outsourcing childcare. Constant technological advances reshape the job market, shifting economic risk from corporations onto individuals. Reliance on fossil fuels for production takes a significant toll on the environment. All these drawbacks of the never-ending technological revolution exemplify the inability to sustain a capitalist system and the dissatisfaction of all individuals within this society. Capitalism is disruptive not only during economic failures but also because its normal functioning succeeds, though destabilizing families, ecosystems, and lives while wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few.
“In this theory, the origin of the concept ‘Good’ was mistakenly identified, and thus sought in vain, for the judgment ‘Good’ did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown! Rather, it has been the ‘good men’ themselves, that is, the noble, the powerful, those of high degree, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good…”
Frederich Nietzsche
The first essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals destabilizes common assumptions of morality and “goodness” by exposing their social and historical construction rather than their assumed eternal truth. Today, we call compassion, empathy, and selflessness “good”, but where did these notions come from? Nietzsche describes the reality of these definitions of good as being rooted in the historical context of powerless or lower-class individuals revaluing the traits of their oppressors as “evil” (traits like pride, strength, or greed fall into this definition). Similarly, they elevated their conditions of weakness as “good.” Throughout the first essay, Nietzsche deeply analyzes the linguistic and historical roots of these definitions. This genealogical approach and tracing of historical uses of these terms disrupts the reader’s moral certainty through the assertion that our deeply rooted values and ethical convictions stem from reactive emotion rather than from any objective, factual, or concrete foundation. Ultimately, Nietzsche does not only critique morality, but exposes the unstable rooting of “good” and “evil”, revealing the traditional idea of “goodness” as disguised resentment rather than its more common positive interpretation and usage. Nietzsche urges readers to critically engage and understand the limitations of language in encompassing hierarchies and values, leaving the reader to question their own moral judgment and if the gravitational pull of power, history, and self-interest is escapable.
“The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails,—they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour.”
Upton Sinclair
As seen in the above quote, the conditions of work during the Industrial Revolution were not only gruesome and unclean but also exploitative and inhumane. The book reveals how working-class life under unchecked capitalism is already disrupted; the real disruption or disobedience is not the strikes, protests, or publications but the violence hidden beneath the appearance of normal economic systems. The Jungle demonstrates how capitalism disrupts the most basic aspects of life: eating, housing, family, love, and, importantly, safety. The book describes how the system is designed to constantly undercut working-class people, making survival the only mindset. It is revealed how industrial society manufactures precarity, turning every day of these workers’ lives into a living hell. Jurgis and his family arrive believing in the promise of steady work and upward mobility, but that promise collapses through a series of everyday shocks—wage cuts, layoffs, injuries, death from preventable disease, and fraudulent contracts. Child labor, sexual exploitation, and the erosion of humanity and dignity disrupt the boundaries between safety and danger, as well as childhood and adulthood. Children are forced to trade playing, exploring, and learning for dangerous, meticulous work to assist their families. The disruption lies within the realization that millions of people live and work in catastrophic conditions while others live comfortably, calling it order or survival of the fittest. The normal functioning of a capitalist system is inherently disruptive, restricting access to basic needs through the constant need to work even during times of physical or mental barriers/harm.
“We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified and self-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy left without a lie with which to cover its nakedness!”
Upton Sinclair
The contents of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” expose the gruesome truth of the meat-packing industry, but more importantly, exemplify the explosion of the boundaries of American Literature. During the early 1900s and late 1890s, popular and frequent novels focused on romanticized progress and prosperity in America, praising capitalism, promoting ideas of hard work, and instilling hope for achieving the American Dream within the country’s youth. Sinclair on the other hand, forced readers to witness filth, exploitation, abuse, and the human cost associated with the “advancement” of industrial capitalism. Rather than the typical narratives about individuals or families moving up the socioeconomic ranks of the capitalist structure, Sinclair exposes the structural violence, slavery, housing fraud, workplace abuse, starvation, harm, and death behind this illusion of capitalism as the perfect path to success. Once published, Sinclair’s piece triggered the public, and his novel was investigated by the federal government. The contents of this book are incredibly graphic, disturbing, and harmful, and Sinclair’s publication ruptured everyday political life and caused disturbances to common perceptions of capitalism and America’s economic system. This piece opened readers’ eyes to the hidden costs of production, increased manufacturing, and capitalism, challenging the government’s one-sided presentation of capitalism’s benefits, revealing the truth they aimed to conceal.
Postcolonial theory challenges the proposition of colonialism as a closed chapter of history. It insists that political systems, economic dependencies, and even a structure of knowledge production persist in continuing colonial power structures. Sidi M. Omar’s work exposes how colonial domination carries on currently, a lot more than most people may think or know. Omar’s scholarship deals with Western Sahara, one of the world’s longest-standing unresolved colonial situations. While often framed as a territorial “dispute,” Omar disrupts this framing by naming what that is: an ongoing process of colonial occupation. From a postcolonial perspective, this re-naming is important. It reveals how colonial powers keep control, not just through force, but through language, law, and selective recognition on the world stage. Often, categories of Developed vs Undeveloped, First vs Third World, and Global North vs South are used to describe economic status groupings of nations based on GDP, another example of frequent renaming with the intent to be politically correct, but always falling short. The constant renaming of developmental statuses becomes redundant and meaningless as there are no terms that can fully encapsulate the lived reality of an entire place–much less a whole country. This goes for the use of GDP as well, as it can never be an all-encompassing measure of development, as it fails to account for many other factors that contribute to growth, development, productivity, the economy, and more.
A central contribution of Omar’s work is his critique of those international institutions that claim neutrality while reinforcing colonial hierarchies. Omar describes how legal frameworks that were to protect self-determination themselves become tools that delay it. Omar further disrupts dominant modes of knowledge, reminding us to be aware of whose voices get louder-and whose are muted-is never an accident. By placing the Sahrawi voices at the center, Omar resists an Eurocentric narrative of colonized peoples rendered passive or helpless. Instead, he foregrounds resistance, political agency, and historical continuity. In this way, it is not simply a postcolonial work of Sidi M. Omar; it’s actively disruptive. His perspective insists that thinkers revisit their own ideas on questions of sovereignty, legality, and justice in a world where colonialism has not ended, merely evolved. He challenges the common notion that “colonization is in the past’ while providing current examples of imperialist policies and ideologies that prevent development by promoting interdependence and maintaining power hierarchies that benefit wealthy nations and belittle the poor.
“Around the world, the equivalent of one dump truck filled with clothing is sent to a landfill or incinerator every second.”
Eric Liedtke
Clothing companies produce twice as much clothing today than they did in 2000, and the average American consumer now purchases four times as many clothing items as they did in that same time period. It’s estimated that Americans don’t wear about 50% of the clothing they own, and 65% of the clothing they purchase ends up getting disposed of within 12 months. Because of this, clothing is often exported to Global South Countries, disguised as assistance, sending clothing to countries in need when in reality it causes substantially more harm. The United States sends over 15 million articles of clothing to Ghana a week, ending up in massive secondhand markets like Kantamanto Market in Accra, creating a significant waste crisis as up to half the imported garments are unsellable, clogging landfills, polluting beaches, and overwhelming local waste systems with textile waste, much of it fast fashion that quickly becomes trash. This extreme quantity of unwanted clothing is a disruptive force that restructures everyday life in places like Accra, while the cause (fast fashion companies and exporting companies like the U.S.) creates an environmental catastrophe by forcing this immense burden upon lower-income nations on the other side of the world. Local textile producers and tailors are pushed out of business as secondhand fast fashion floods the market at prices they cannot compete with, eroding domestic industries, productivity, and livelihoods. At the same time, the sheer volume of unsellable garments turns consumption in the Global North into environmental destruction in the Global South, shifting the burden of waste management onto communities with the least infrastructure to absorb it. What appears as excess convenience for American consumers thus becomes economic displacement, ecological degradation, and public health risk elsewhere—revealing overconsumption as a global system of harm rather than an individual choice. The documentary “Buy Now!”, as well as various other environmental sources, exposes the harm of overconsumption, and its parallels to imperialist and colonizing methods specifically in America.
“The constant and necessary distinction between the rules and the ruled, however, prevents us from calling representative democracy a ‘real democracy’. A real democracy, according to Hardt and Negri can only exist when there is no distinction between rulers and ruled.”
Thomas Decreus
This document is a 2011 political theory essay by Thomas Decreus analyzing the Occupy and Indignados movements as experiments in direct, horizontal democracy and critiquing their rejection of traditional political representation. These movements were incredibly disruptive as they challenged the foundations of democracy and the functions of political representation and preservation of economic inequality. Occupy rejected representative politics- they didn’t lobby leaders or propose reform, they argued for the creation of the unbridgeable divide between rulers and the ruled. They occupied public spaces, assemblies, and disrupted urban life while simultaneously experimenting with alternative forms of democracy based more directly on public participation and collective decision making and deliberation. Occupy exposed the limits of a representative democracy and demonstrated that these protests themselves could function as a form of democratic practice rather than merely a demand for reform.
David Graeber was an American anthropologist, author, and activist who often critiqued capitalism, promoting his anarchist politics. He was actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and popularized the “We are the 99%” slogan, as well as wrote many influential books that challenged conventional economic ideas. In this interview, he describes how his family lacked books of critique, prompting his anthropological interests and becoming fascinated with anarchy and public movements. Graeber, in this 2014 interview, describes how Occupy is not gone, and projects continue around the United States and the world. He viewed the movements as genuine democracy– an anarchist movement that exposed the corruption within social, political, and economic spheres of U.S. life. He describes the necessity to challenge financial power and argues that the success was not immediate change but the creation of space allowing for creative expression, imagination, and rebuilding. These movements challenged the legitimacy of a corrupt system, which Graeber describes as continuously challenged, even years after the more “formal” or notable Occupy movements.
In May 2011, the movement of popular assemblies erupted as a disruption to society. Begun through a Facebook call to express indignation, this movement morphed quickly into a mass occupation. This assembly delegitimized the political class, forced general strikes, and disrupted the flow of everyday life in the heart of Athens. Parliamentary access, business, education, baking, and tourism were repeatedly interrupted, affecting the daily lives of people in Greece. The assemblies demanded direct democracy and exposed the divisions between peaceful protesters, anti-authoritarians,and nationalists, increasing tension within the movement, but also increasing difficulty for the state to involve itself. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people formed blockades and attempted to prevent Military Professionals from entering parliament. Protesters rioted, created barricades, improvised medical aid, and played music during tear gas exposure. This movement demonstrated how powerful the combination of unity, perseverance, and protest is, even when disordered and disorganized. This assembly created a political crisis that terrified elites and prompted the reconfiguration of social norms of who can speak and act in the public sphere. Syntagma’s occupations disrupted institutional routine, fractured political legitimacy, and dispersed power to the people through the promises brought through solidarity, popularity, and movement.
“The conflicts between the protesters and the established rulers during the crisis allowed news media to adopt a variety of frames congruent with their political and social values.”
Y. Roselyn Du
In 2014 in Hong Kong, the Umbrella movement began after Beijing ruled against universal suffrage, prompting tens of thousands of activists to occupy main roads in the city for weeks on end. Protesters built barricades, set up tents, and shut down necessary districts, which disrupted traffic, businesses, and daily life, as well as created huge transportation delays. Police responded with arrests and clearance operations, which increased tension in the city as opposed to restoring order. The yellow umbrellas were used to shield themselves from pepper spray and tear gas, which was politically symbolic as it challenged China’s authority and exposed the deeply rooted divisions within Hong Kong’s society. This also produced polarized media narratives worldwide, with state-controlled media portraying the protests as chaos, while Western outlets framed the protests as promoting democracy. This document is a journal article describing the divide in media coverage from different regions and how this framing creates different interpretations of the occupation.
The Occupy movements in Spain escalated quickly due to the deep economic crisis the country faced. protestors physically surrounded the national parliament, confronting the government about the widening gap between the general population of Spanish citizens and the elected officials in Congress. This occupation was incredibly disruptive as it halted the normal flow of political life and forced politicians to acknowledge and visibly see the public withdrawing their trust and faith. Over 1,400 police officers quickly became involved, and the scene escalated with dozens of arrests, rubber bullets, and baton charges, intensifying the situation drastically. Protestors in this occupation were charged with treason and crimes against the nation, even though they were surrounding rather than occupying the government offices. Protesters were organized by M15, which was incredibly efficient and effective at organizing creative protests and demonstrations within banks and parliament. In this video, Maria Carrion reports live from Madrid on the increased anger of Spaniards as they’re driven to hunger and poverty due to the bank repossessing their homes, while the tenants still have to pay the debt, while homeless. These protestors disrupted the political order of the nation and exposed the crisis and tension between the public and the austerity-driven state.
“Mr. Cottam said that incidents of urination and defecation on the land outside the cathedral had continued. This was harmful to the life of the cathedral. Employees were now often engaged in cleaning up after these incidents, which, said Mr. Cottam, are “detrimental to the operation of the cathedral as a place of worship…” Graffiti was still appearing on the cathedral. Disruption to services was also continuing.”
Mr. Justice Lindblom
The Occupy encampment at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was immensely disruptive. The camps and people involved transformed this religious & public gathering place into grounds for protest, disrupting the daily lives of those attending worship, tourists, employees, and pedestrians. The camp created significant issues with noise, sanitation, and safety. Many problems arose from urination and defecation on and around the cathedral, as well as many noise complaints from persistent noise–disrupting religious services and daily operations. The conditions here damaged the calm historic setting of the cathedral and discouraged visitors and religious people from entering, causing a notable drop in attendance and revenue for St. Paul’s.
“Every minute of the day, I think about what I need to be doing next to sustain the battle to gain freedom, not just for my husband but for myself and for others. None of us are free. We have been living off the whim of an autocrat who decided our fate with a stroke of the pen.”
– Dr. Ala’a Shehabi
The uprisings in Bahrain were demonstrations that challenged the internal power of the nation as well as its external relations. People gathered in masses at the Pearl Roundabout, with many series of anti-government protests led mainly by the Shia and some Sunni Bahraini opposition. The Pearl Roundabout was initially a symbol of modernization as well as the formation of the GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council; however became more commonly associated with the 2011 democracy protests and was demolished soon after as an attempt to quell the movement as well as its significance. Similar to global Occupy movements, thousands of people occupied this space, showcasing collective resistance and disrupting daily life. The movement threatened the GCC’s commitment to preserving Bahrain’s rule by ordering Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to deploy troops over the border. In the end, this uprising not only disrupted the authoritarian rule of Bahrain but also the idea that the Arab Spring would not impact nations with substantial oil wealth in the Gulf.
“Within days of Bouazizi setting himself on fire, Tunisians began filling the streets of their cities with largely peaceful protests… this display of mass nonviolent action to effect rapid change would have been stunning anywhere, but was especially remarkable in a region that had grown notorious for its seeming inability to change peacefully, if at all.”
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Mohammad Bouazizi, setting himself on fire in Tunisia during the series of Occupy movements, was immensely disruptive. This act emphasized the need for drastic change, as this man was willing to sacrifice his life and body to disrupt the cycle that many had become complacent with. This action symbolized how deeply disenfranchised people were under Tunisia’s authoritarian rule, and that the people would no longer stand for this. His igniting exposed the brutality of the economic and political system that had become incredibly exclusive, often leaving behind the lower classes. The youth were angry- they were consistently repressed under their government, and desperately wanted new rules, yet their internet connections and communication with others about their widespread dissatisfaction yielded few results. Following Bouazizi’s decision to set himself on fire, protests ignited around police abuse, corruption, and high unemployment rates across the nation. Ultimately, this resulted in President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fleeing the country less than a month later, opening space for new political leaders and freedoms and the establishment of a more open civil society through a newly constructed constitution. This act also sparked the Arab Spring- uprisings in Syria, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen, demonstrating that this single act of disruption-when other methods are unheard, can transform political and economic landscapes, opening the conversation globally.
“The balance tipped. Going down to protest became acceptable Before then, people like members of my family would have said, ‘No way, how could you protest? It is not something people like us do.’ Then it became normal to protest. It became something we could do.”
Jawad Nabulsi
Jawad Nabulsi tells his personal experience of the Occupy movements in Egypt, taking place in Tahrir Square. Nabulsi’s narrative is particularly impactful as he was from a fairly wealthy family, and he recounts times where he was privileged enough to not follow certain procedures, like taking his driver’s license test, because his family had connections everywhere. He frames himself as well as his brother as people who did not need to partake in the movement, but were capable of doing so to benefit others. The tactics of “occupation” challenged the normal flow of everyday life and infrastructure, through taking over public space like Tahrir Square, a major public square in the heart of downtown Cairo, Egypt. The occupation undermined the regimes claim to order and complacency, especially when large numbers of people camped in central Cairo. The tactics of occupation allowed a wide cross-section of society from students, workers, unemployed graduates, young women—to participate, not just in short demonstrations but in extended presence. This broadened social disruption. The disruption can also be seen through Nabilsis personal story as he took part in the occupations regardless of the fact that his family was very well off, showcasing a reframing of whos involved, demonstrating the strong desire for change, even from those benefitting from this system. The tactics of occupation in Cairo were highly disruptive: they rewrote the rules of protest, challenged the state’s control of space, mobilised and organized large groups of society, and created a model for global protest movements.
“So he… proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning himself, of course the most important functions-doctor, president, scientist- therefore providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego of the male”
Valerie Solanas
Valerie Solanas publishes the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto in 1967, with the intent to describe the flaws of men and the society they’ve established. Men are described as egocentric, sexually driven animals who are incapable of mental interaction and are far inferior to women in all aspects. The manifesto uses sexual and vulgar language to describe men’s (lack of) purpose and how unfit and incompetent they are in filling all duties and roles in society. It is described that men created a society that functions through a work-money system, made to give men a sense of individuality, (doctor, president or scientist), to give them some sort of false value or identity to boost their ego. As the thesis of the SCUM Manifesto is to rebuild society without men, Solanas describes men as only being useful to reproduce, but with the existence of sperm banks, the existence of men is no longer necessary.
“SCUM is against the entire system, the very idea of law and government. SCUM is out to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it.”
Valerie Solanas
Valerie Solanas, an American radical feminist, published The SCUM Manifesto in 1967, advocating for the dismantling of patriarchal structures established by men and the creation of a female-led society. Solanas critiques male dominance and systemic gender inequality, arguing that these societal flaws stem from male control. The manifesto calls upon “thrill-seeking females to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex,” framing men as the root of societal instability and inefficiency, justifying the radical restructuring of society in favor of women, by women.
