Occupy Publishing Launches with Petition Campaign

This lonely corner on Wall Street is where New York's first slave market was. These days people catch cabs or shop nearby, completely unaware of its history.

As someone who has been involved with Occupy Wall Street from its first days I observed that despite all the media attention, many important stories were not being told. I felt too much attention was focused  on the protests and not enough on the history behind them. Then while doing research about New York’s past, I discovered that one of the greatest untold stories was that of the slave market that had been at this lonely intersection on Wall Street. The market was created in 1711. It was a place where men, women and children were bought and sold. Ships would dock along the East River and unload their cargoes of coffee, sugar, indigo, cloth and human beings. It was such big business that during the colonial era one out of five people in New York was an enslaved African. One in five.

So it seemed natural that Occupypublishing should make telling this untold history of Wall Street its first project. If you have a minute, please sign our petition to ask the NY City Council to place permanent signage on Wall Street at the site of the first slave market. We already got a great article in the Huffingtonpost explaining much of the history. Now the next step is a modest kickstarter-style fundraiser to get thousands of postcards and a broadside printed for free distribution. If this is a subject you care about please consider being part of the project. Your contribution will help raise the awareness of this untold history and will help get permanent signs put up in Manhattan. Being part of that is worth a few bucks right? Something to tell your grand kids about!

- CC