The Real Reasons

Now many people have so far asked the question: What do the protestors of Occupy Wall Street want? Answers vary from source to source, reflecting different viewpoints of the people. The fact of the matter is people have different reasons for participating in the Occupy movement. Some are unemployed are want unemployment to be dealt with. Others are upset about the inefficiency of the government, while others are upset about the corporate lobbying and corruption of Congress. Still others are upset about the wide gap between the top 1% of the population (who control most of the wealth) and the lower 99%. But all these problems are all part of a general dissatisfaction with the current political and economic system.

Now some may say it’s not so bad. The wealthy aren’t as high up s you think they are, and it’s been like this forever. These people don’t get it, and are probably trying to cover their backs. Because looking at the stats, the statistical support is overwhelmingly in Occupy Wall Street’s favor in terms of who’s right. But that’s not really a good thing, now is it? According to Business Insider, the gap between the top percent of America and the rest is larger than ever, and isn’t reflected in other countries. Unemployment is at a high and its taking longer for people to find jobs and longer for companies to find qualified employees. All these factors weigh in heavily on the minds of people, and it’s just now finally showing through with these movements. 

About one thousand people gather and form a large "99%" in the middle of Freedom Plaza during an occupation of the plaza Oct. 6 in Washington, DC. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement that began last month in New York, large and small occupations have sprung up in cities across the country. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) #

With all these readily discernible facts and statistics ready to back up the movement and its validity, you would think there would be more of a positive reaction, a call to action if you will. Now while the people feel this call to action, (The movement has spread nationwide and worldwide incredibly fast) the people who can actually initiate the change are still sluggish to react in any meaningful way.

Occupy the World

                As Occupy Wall Street moves into its 5^th 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.

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.

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.

Why Can't OWS get off the Ground?

Occupy Wall Street has been getting more coverage little by little over the past week. But the protests have actually been going on for almost three weeks now. What has made the media so slow to react? And when they finally did react, why at first was it so dismissive? Is American media so disenchanted with protests now that they give them no heed until violence breaks out? Do protests have to contain a concise purpose? A sense of unity in order for it to become legitimate? According to most mainstream media outlets, yes. 

When coverage first began, it was quick to label and dismiss the protestors as societal oddballs, the weird hippies and delinquents of New York. But as it spread and grew, they realized that image wouldn’t fly anymore. So they started to question the purpose, since so many protestors were giving different answers when asked why. But they are missing the point of the whole thing. There’s no way they can ask for specific things to be done, if they don’t want to keep the current system in the first place. You don’t ask the system to change if you don’t like the system fundamentally.That's the whole point of Occupy WallStreet, to show the American people's general dissatisfaction with the government and the way society is run now, and the desire to change it. Issues such as employment, homelessness, poverty, corporate corruption and greed are all part of this massive movement.

Occupy Wall Street at Foley Square

The fact that the media has to have video of violent reactions by police and rights violations in order to cover it properly reflects the growing sentiment that the media is “in bed” with the “1%”. And this might be the case. Media is run by some of the wealthiest people in the world and corruption can be rampant. I mean, just look at the case of Rupert Murdoch. That is basically the problem in a nutshell with the media. A corrupt media with its own agenda does not reflect the will of the people and for a long time now this has been going on. So much so that people nowadays don’t question what the media says. They shouldn’t have to, media should be objective, but it’s not so they should. But they don’t and that’s where it goes wrong. When real issues are being dismissed, or set aside, or reported in a biased manner, the media is not doing its job. And so far, this has been the case.

Fake Activism

On the topic of activism, and the earlier topic of Occupy Wall Street, I thought I would share a video I stumbled across while searching through articles:

In this interview, Naomi Wolfe (who honestly I've never heard of before) brings up some goods points, her main point being that with the laws set by our government today, protests are not effective. She says that in order to be effective, they have to disrupt the way people outside of the protest go about their lives. This makes sense, I mean, no one will pay attention to it if they can just bypass it. But if they get stuck in traffic because thousands of protestors are taking to the streets, then they tend to take notice. So why now, even though our rights give us the right to protest, can we not protest disruptively? Civil disobedience is almost illegal now, since protesting without a permit is illegal and with a permit you have to follow strict guidelines. But these strict guidelines take away any sort of oomph the protests have and strip it of any effectiveness. 

You can't protest the status quo by obeying it, that's not how it works. But you have to now or risk being arrested. Which in this economy, if people are arrested, they lose any chance of finding a decent job. Which is what they're protesting about. So it all comes around in this big loop of fake activism, where activism nowadays has been fixed so that it almost has no meaning. Unless they are willing to protest indefinitely with this slow rate of acceptance, Occupy Wall Street needs to figure out how to get around this obstacle of ineffective protesting.

Activism for Activism's Sake

                So here I am, sitting around watching my show Community. I have a ton of homework to do but I’m in one of those procrastinatory moods, you know the one. So I’m trying not to think about my blog posts because I have no idea what to talk about. None. Zilch. Nada. Then while watching Community, it just hands me an idea. It’s like it realized my light and decided to help. Thank you Community, I never thought a show about the most unproductive study group could ever help me be productive, but it has.  So in the recent episode, a lot is going on, but Britta (the “activist” of the group) learned that a ‘friend’ of hers is part of a small group that went to Syria and got detained by the government for protesting. So this sets off a chain reaction where she basically reasserts her hippie ideologies and stages a bunch of unsuccessful, solitary protests against anything related to “the man”. The joke being, that she feels the obligation to be as “unruly” (Couldn’t think of a good term, meh) as the friend that just got detained, so she starts to protest again just for the sake of protesting and being cool. Which got me thinking about how it seems that there are some people that do do this. And those people don’t really add any legitimacy to any protests or cause they join, they just bog it down with what people see as being hippies for hippies sake. But is this so common? 

That one guy

 We all know that one activist guy, the guy who knows all the causes and raises all the fundraisers and gets involved. But what really decides whether or not they are being a poser or if they are actually helping. Because sometimes it seems to me that, while some people may in fact use it too much for their own image than for the actual benefit, activism can sometimes be purposely misconstrued to seem self-centered. When in fact, it may not be self-centered, but rather that person is actually getting involved because they want to help.  And the real reason people feel so hostile towards them is that because they realize that that person is doing more good than they are and they want to reassure themselves about their own actions (or inactions). And now even as I’m writing this I feel self-conscious and almost hypocritical, although not really, because I’m kinda righting an activist blog and I’m now writing about fake activism that doesn’t help, even though my opinions don’t really help either. Hmm.

People dislike activism sometimes because it makes them feel like they aren’t doing enough. But you don’t have to be that kid with the dreads who always passes petitions around, buys only organic food, and attends all the protests. Activism is about spreading a word, an ideology where if people are informed about something, they will make more informed decisions. And informed decisions lead to a better society. So you don’t have to be in that club with all the hippies to be an activist. Those are the people who really do the extra mile. All you have to do is be informed. Read the news; stay up to date on current issues. Most of all just stay informed. If you know for a fact a certain product isn’t manufactured in a fair environment, or a certain company is kinda sketchy, just don’t buy that brand. Bringing back that old sense of boycotting, well it really can make a difference. And it doesn’t have to be loud and in-your-face to work.

This Time, Its America

With the recent demonstrations in New York City, Occupy Wall Street has been gaining momentum, spreading to several big cities across the US. Representing the “99%’, Occupy Wall Street mirrors the anger of the middle class against the few elite and the inefficiency of congress.  Having set up their own sort of base camp in Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, O.W.S. has grown over little more than a week to thousands of people. With marches and protests across New York City, they are drawing attention to their struggle for social equality and effective government. But the main media attraction isn’t about the protestors themselves, but police reaction to them. 

Recently, video has emerged showing a police commander indiscriminately, and unprovokedly pepper spraying random protestors, who had done nothing illegal. Other reports of police brutality have been filed, including assault and unjustified arrests. In trying to expose the governments and the upper class, the protestors have also once again laid bare the growing corruptness of our police system and the unchecked police brutality. But this isn’t new is it? No, police have been power tripping for quite some time now, and every once in a while the media latches on to a particular story, a startling revelation of police corruption. But nothing ever comes of it. And that is what needs to change in America. We have so many problems with corruption, and discrimination, and greed, and in proportionate wealth, that we just need to fix it. That’s why there are protests going on now. Because our government is not doing its job.

A Global Stage

It all started in the Middle East, where Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest his countries corruption, leading to an overthrow of Tunisia’s government. This air of change quickly spread, from Egypt to Libya, from Syria, to Yemen. Israel and Iran aren’t safe from unrest, and neither is Africa. Across Asia, people are questioning their way of life under governments that don’t fully represent them, as special interest groups and political scandals rock any sort of representative equality to the ground. In India, a man went on a twelve day hunger strike in order to enact anti0corruption measures in parliament, and eventually succeeded. And now in the west, revolts and riots in Europe over unemployment, discrimination, and overall despair for the future have shaken the status quo, as once-stable government are now dealing with a discontented population of youth. Even the US, the superpower once revered the world over, has fallen to economic woes, and the middle class has felt it heavily. With protests starting in the US as well, is this the age of revolution again. Are we now in another age of renewal? Just as democracy was the answer to monarchy and dictatorship, what will be the answer to democracy? 

Poster rallying for support of Middle Eastern uprisings.

 

The answer might actually depend on a few factors really. As reflected in the demonstrations, different cultures and regions are protesting in different manners. In the Middle East for example, protests take the form of massive, nonviolent gatherings to show their corrupt governments that they have no support anymore. The violence often only ensues after the government forces fire upon them. Many of these protests are about equality, a way to get their voice heard, they want a democracy. Sometimes they are able to do it peacefully, and other times not. They are questioning those in power, the elite few that control everything. And this is happening elsewhere too.

A London youth walks past a burnt-out car as looting continued in the UK.

In the UK for example, the riots in London and surrounding areas showed us a youthful population that had no hope for their future. They were discontent with their government and their opportunities, and retaliated against the society that gave that to them. By looting and rioting and destroying property, they fought against their materialistic society, which has led them into a whole of unemployment and poverty before they can even leave school. Britain has given no future to them, and they want one. 

Across the Arab revolutions, social media has become the strong point of organization and community among protestors.

All these revolutions have one thing in common: The Internet. Social media has made it easier than ever before to organize mass gatherings and protests. Organization can be done quickly and efficiently, across boundaries once impassable. Support through online banking sites like PayPal allow for instant unions of activists and all this has been and is being utilized right now in these demonstrations.  The internet has also spawned a communal culture, one where everyone looks out for each other and aids each other without question at one time, and viciously taking down those detrimental to the ideals at another. A sense of community and sharing-the-wealth has pervaded the web, and that sense of camaraderie has been reflected in the recent protests. What these protests will spawn in beyond prediction for now, but it looks as if a world-wide change is approaching in the ways governments and their people interact