Micah M. White is credited with being the co-creator, and the only American creator, of the original idea for the Occupy Wall Street protests. He is a former editor of Adbusters magazine, the anti-consumerism magazine that originally called for Occupy Wall Street. His book, , was published by Knopf Canada in 2016. He is the founder of Activist Graduate School, a website offering video courses aimed at activists.
Biography
White "was born to a Caucasian mother and an African-American father". In middle school, he reportedly refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. He attended Grand Blanc Community High School in Grand Blanc, Michigan. There he started a controversial student atheists club. As part of his experience he published an Op-Ed piece "Atheists Under Siege" in the July 21, 1999 issue of the New York Times. He was also interviewed on Politically Incorrect and received the 1999 Ruth Jokinen Memorial Student Activist Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He earned a B.A. at Swarthmore College and an M.A. and Ph.D. at the European Graduate School. At the time of the Occupy Wall Street protests, White was working as senior editor for Adbusters magazine with Occupy Wall Street co-creator Kalle Lasn. White ran the Adbusters Twitter account, and sent the first tweet to use the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet from that account. As the Occupy Wall Street movement gained momentum, White served as the group's unofficial publicist, though he was located in Berkeley, California, and not New York. After a group of Occupy Wall Street activists sought to raise funds for the movement by selling posters, White, who had already left Adbusters, took over Adbusters' Twitter account to declare support for the sale. After Adbusters regained control of the account, White referred to his actions as a "playful insurrection".
Awards
In December 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle included White in a list of the "most fascinating people in the Bay Area 2011". In December 2014, Esquire Magazine named White one of the most influential people under 35 years of age. In 2018, White was awarded the Roddenberry Fellowship, Voqal Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at Bard College. In 2019, he was the Activist-in-Residence at UCLA.
