Catching up on the Occupy Wall Street movement

October 7, 2011

Image by: _PaulS_

If, like me, you have been hastily passing over the blog posts, tweets and news articles about the #OccupyWallStreet movement in favour of happier fare like 8-year-olds rapping Nicki Minaj or Jodie Marsh’s venture into body building, then take note.

Occupy Wall Street is gaining ground and it’s becoming less and less possible to ignore (it already has its own parody movement, for goodness sake!). With protests planned in London on October 15^th, the movement has officially become relevant.

Why haven’t I been paying attention? Well, for some reason stuff like this just makes me reach for my blinders and I can’t really figure out why. When an uprising happens in the Middle East, I follow it with fascination, checking if it’s trending on Twitter, reading blogs, and watching all the grainy YouTube videos. So what makes this situation different? Is it guilt that I don’t plan to take to the streets in solidarity? Is it the feeling that it won’t make a difference? Or, does the whole thing (poverty, joblessness, police brutality, etc.) just depress me? Whatever the reason, I figured it’s time to grow up and make sense of what the protests are all about.

On September 17, a couple of hundred people gathered in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in response to the Canadian activist magazine Adbusters’ call for people to take over Wall Street for two months. Since these humble beginnings and with the help of the Internet, Occupy Wall Street has evolved into a global movement that can now be found in several cities across the world. People are flocking to their financial districts by the thousands, expressing dissatisfaction with everything from unfair wealth distribution, corporate greed and high unemployment.

Adding to the drama, arrests and accusations of police brutality have heightened what began as a small, peaceful protest. In New York, 700 people were arrested last week after trying to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Two days ago in Seattle police arrested dozens of protesters who refused to take down their tents in abidance with a no-camping law. Photos and YouTube videos capturing what many believe is unnecessary police violence have been making the rounds on the Internet and tensions are certainly heightened.

The movement has received criticism for its lack of clear demands, though I think that’s to be expected from an organic situation like this. Aside from the initial call to action by Adbusters, the movement appears to be a collection of individuals gathered around a common interest but all seeking something slightly different- teachers unions want money for schools, students are tired of rising tuition costs, labour unions are fighting against unemployment and parents seek adequate healthcare for their children. For many, it seems, the first and foremost demand is to be heard. In an unaired interview for Fox News, one protester put it this way,

“As far as seeing this end, I wouldn’t like to see this end. I would like to see the conversation continue. This is what we should have been talking about in 2008 when the economy collapsed. We basically patched a hole on the tire and said let the car keep rolling.”

Though both Occupy Wall Street and the July riots here in the UK have been described as “class warfare,” the current movement is notably different from the looting and vandalism seen a few months ago. During the UK riots people seemed to have given up, succumbing to fruitless aggression, whereas people in this movement seem to retain the hope that change is possible. Of course with anything like this there will inevitably be those who protest simply because they enjoy being angry, but for the most part #OccupyWallStreet represents exactly what it claims to be. It is the other 99 per cent.

Have you been keeping up with #OccupyWallStreet? Please share your thoughts on the growing protests.