As
Occupy Wall Street moves into its 5th week, solidarity
protests are springing up around the world. It seems that public support
and media circulation has arrived to help out the cause. Protests across the US
and around the world erupted yesterday and continue today, from Iowa, to Hong
Kong, China. Marches and rallies were held across the world in support of the
recently growing ‘Occupy’ movement, a movement aimed at using peaceful protests
to assert views against corporate corruption and economic inequality. Most
notably in Spain and Greece, protestors have been demonstrating for a while
now. Greece is having its own economic panic, as much of the population is
angry at the supposed corruption and high unemployment throughout the
corruption.
However,
for every peaceful protest, there are a group of trouble makers. In Rome,
a group of anarchists calling themselves the ‘Black bloc’ torched a number of
cars after hijacking a large, peaceful demonstration. This led to
confrontations with the police, and more than 70 people were injured, 40 of
which were police officers. This is not
the spirit and ideology behind the occupy movement. The spirit should be of
peaceful demonstration, of civil disobedience. But turning to a riot mentality
is not OK. In order to be taken seriously, and as a legitimate organization of
real people with real issues, it has to be nonviolent. We can’t have a bunch of
people running around, badmouthing police because they can, because they’re in
a large movement. They have to act as one, as a whole group bound together by
the same principles.
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| Protesters hold a banner that says in Swedish, "We refuse to pay the crisis of capitalism," as they take part in the Occupy Stockholm demonstration on Saturday. |
For instance, Redditor Readdator posted this
plea to protestors in New York, urging them to be more respectful and
mindful of their overall goal after witnessing the events himself. He recounts seeing people blatantly trying to
provoke the police by personally attacking them verbally and generally being
combative, as well as advocating their own personal agendas. These people are
taking advantage of this system of protests, of the media coverage to spread their
own little message. While this is somewhat part of the whole ideology of Occupy
Wall Street, their views need to add to the validity of the movement, not
detract from it. Top commenter bitcloud
makes a good point about this: “TL;DR: Be the change you wish to see in the world” (TL;DR being an acronym for the phrase too
long; didn’t read. This is often used in the reddit community to express the
main idea of a statement)
But if
the movement can distance themselves from these separate groups, what next?
Every day support is growing and the worldwide solidarity demonstrations show a
worldwide desire for change. If this is so widespread, so international, what
would it take for this to change the world as we know it? I don’t mean to sound over dramatic, but this movement could very well be the tipping point for
worldwide social and economic change. It depends on how effective they are, how
much they affect business as usual. As states before in ‘Fake Activism’, a
protest will not work if you obey the rules, don’t disrupt the flow. You have to do these things in order to
get attention; attention from the media, attention from the people, and attention
from the big businesses. The push for
change must continue, and it has to get the attention of government officials,
no matter how much people may dislike the idea of going through the government
to get what they want. If politicians feel the need to listen to the movement,
then maybe real progress can be made. But otherwise, the protestors will just
be more white noise I the streets.
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| The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread cities around the world. Hundreds of anarchists during the protests in Rome have burnt cars and set an Interior Ministry building on fire. |
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