ORIGINAL MARCH 2012 ANNOUNCEMENT: Occupy Wall Street was the biggest news story of 2011. Among those who followed the movement like a storm chaser, Boston Phoenix Staff Writer Chris Faraone is one of the few who blogged about daily Occupy minutiae, but also stepped back to investigate and analyze the protest, and deliver weekly features.
Starting in September, Faraone published a series of deep Occupy portraits, traveling to more than a dozen cities from Boston to Seattle. His work illustrates day-to-day Occupy operations, as well the characters who make the movement tick. In the process, he also landed nationwide exclusives, like a scoop on an underground legion of cops who support Occupy.
99 Nights with the 99 Percent is a collection of Faraone's published posts and articles on Occupy, streamlined into a sleek 224-page edition that also packs unpublished pieces and a number of bonus features. In addition to pics and illustrations, a series of haikus run throughout the book, taking readers through a timeline of the first 100 days of the movement.
There are other books on Occupy, and by this time next year there will be countless tomes, apps, Occu-mentaries, and oral histories to choose from. But even then, 99 Nights will remain in a class of its own, as Faraone's story--and the way he tells it, packed with humor and emotion--is wholly unique.
FROM THE NEW FOREWORD: With the fifth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and its franchises all across the country upon us, it's interesting to consider that both widespread agitation and mass grassroots momentum come in waves--from the anti-nuclear proliferation front in the 1980s to the emerging post-Bernie for President movement today. These magic moments are all worth extensive study, because while the faux-populists who cheered on the extinction of Occupy like to pitch some version or another of the same question--What ever happened to those losers?--but aren't interested in waiting for responses, the actual answer is omnipresent.
