Adbusters and the roots of the contemporary left On November 15, 2011, just outside a boarded-up vacant lot in Lower Manhattan, several NYPD officers held down a protester and beat him with batons while a number of onlookers, including the actor Frances McDormand, chanted “Shame, shame, shame.” (It was the first time I’d seen such an assault; I was working for Variety and on the lookout for quotable celebrities.) The protesters had gathered at the request of the Estonian-Canadian documentarian and activist Kalle Lasn, the charismatic founder and primary creative force behind the glossy magazine Adbusters. They had set up tents in Zuccotti Park and declared themselves Occupy Wall Street. This was not quite the second month of the occupation; it had begun on September 17, Lasn’s mother’s birthday.