The Beginning of the American Fall—A Comics Journalist Inside the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Can a cartoonist and millions of random strangers change the world? The initial stages of their attempt are chronicled in this book of comics-journalism and written observations.

Stephanie McMillan, long-time activist and cartoonist, has waited her entire life for the American people to rise up. Sparked by uprisings around the world, a new movement bursts onto the national scene against a system that denies the people a decent life and puts the planet at risk.

With delightful full-color drawings, interviews, dialogue, description, and insightful reflections, this book chronicles the first several months of the fragile and contradictory movement. It situates detailed personal experiences and representative narratives within the broad context of a truly unique and historical global conjuncture. This book will stand as a record of the emerging movement in accessible comics form.

Stephanie McMillan has been a political cartoonist since 1992. She self-syndicates Code Green, a weekly editorial cartoon focused on the environmental emergency, and creates the comic strip Minimum Security five days a week for Universal Uclick. Both can be seen on her website: StephanieMcMillan.org. Her award-winning cartoons have appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide including the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Daily Beast, Yes! magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, plus many textbooks and anthologies. She has been an activist since the early 1980s, working on issues such as imperialist war, immigrant rights, police brutality, and women's reproductive freedom. She currently works with an anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist collective called One Struggle. McMillan is a dynamic public speaker on cartoons and social change. She has given presentations at political conferences such as the Left Forum and Sierra Summit, on radio programs such as Terra Verde and Air America's Ring of Fire, and at many other venues. She appears briefly in the 2011 film End:Civ by Franklin Lopez.