He occupied Occupy Wall Street’s Twitter account and now an officer of the income equality-preaching group wants a former leader to pay half-a-million dollars for muting the social media voice of the 99 percent.
The big-bucks lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Wednesday — the group’s third anniversary — by Marisa Holmes, who heads OWS Media Group, claims Justin Wedes, who she entrusted with the user name and password to @OccupyWallStNYC took the account hostage over a disagreement with other occupiers about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
He objected to Israeli actions being called “genocide,” the suit says, and changed the login information, locking out other users in early August, the suit says.
The feed went quiet for a few weeks, but then Wedes started posting to the handle’s 175,000 followers a few weeks ago without authority or permission, Holmes says in court papers.
She wants a judge to force Wedes to return control of the feed to the group, who say it has to be used in a “democratic way.”
Holmes also claims that “money damages cannot adequately compensate for [the group’s] lost opportunity to speak” — and then seeks a $500,000 award from Wedes.
On her Facebook page Holmes posted a photo of Wedes in a suit and dubbed him, “The Wolf of Occupy Wall Street.”
A commenter named Amala “Antifracking” Lane wrote in response, “the right nickname and right look. That’s what I’m talking about!”
On his own Facebook page, Wedes shot back that the group’s splintering wasn’t just about Gaza, and blamed his lockdown of the Twitter account on a “deeper breakdown in trust on the team.”
Wedes did not immediately return requests for comment. But he explains his Twitter takeover on his personal website, justinwedes.com.
In the Aug. 12 posting Wedes says some OWS members started censoring the feed — limiting posts to one to two Tweets per day.
“I had to say enough!” the ousted teacher huffs under the subject, “Why I closed the #TweetBoat.”
He goes on to write, “I don’t shy away from currently being the chief steward of this account, and my plan is to reinvigorate it again by putting it back in the hands of responsible stewards.”
On the protest movement’s anniversary Wedes has already posted a flurry of about 17 tweets and retweets largely advertising Sept. 22 sit-in to protest big business’s involvement in climate change.