Occupy Wall Street Movement

Occupy Wall Street Movement

November 4, 2017

The fallout years of the 2008 financial crisis brought many of our country’s economic and political malfeasances into focus.  Financial corporate fraud was bailed out by our government with virtually no accountability.   The resulting recession due to this corporate irresponsibility would lead to inequality not seen in our country since the Great Depression.  Private money from these very corporations was actively undermining our democracy and with it the ability to effectively rehabilitate a corrupt economic system.  Trickle-down economics had failed the majority of Americans and created a corporate sanctuary at their expense.

The outrage of these transgressions would manifest itself in the Occupy Wall Street Movement that sprung up in Zuccotti Park in NYC in 2011.  A peaceful protest taking up occupation in a park in the heart of the Wall Street financial district, in order to demonstrate against economic inequality and corporate greed, under the mantra of, “We are the 99%”, struck a chord with many in our country.  “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” rang true for many in the wake of the ‘Great Recession,’ unifying people of all walks of life to join in the occupation, participate in OWS marches in the thousands and support their direct democracy/mutual aid community (that included elements such as a sanitation and health department and news publications operating within the park).

The movement was also laughed off by much of mainstream society and the financial world in which they were protesting.   Their horizontal organization methods and anti-establishment operations made them seem unable to effect real change in the political system.   Thousands would be arrested over the course of the protest, including over 700 during the Brooklyn Bridge march alone.  The initial peaceful occupation was eventually violently repressed in the middle of the night by NYC police and protesters evicted.  As historian Peter Linebarugh described the scene, "2011…the billionaire Bloomberg cleared out the five thousand volumes of thee People's Library of Zuccotti Park by scooping them up in sanitation trucks in the dark of night and dumping the books into the Hudson River. Bloomberg called it "cleaning".

Though the Occupy protest would spin into a nationwide movement, there was reasonable doubt in the protesters ability to move the political needle towards its goals and values.   

Historically, many protests labeled as “doing nothing” in their time will end up being cited retrospectively as important contributors to massive social change.  Protests are often seeds being planted, though sometimes an intense planting.  What form the seed takes and how it branches often takes some time to reveal.  Often it is even hard to connect its new form to the original seed.  Though many of the goals of Occupy Wall Street are far from a reality, the ripple effect is present.  Positions once labeled as politically radical by mainstream society, are now widely debated by them: healthcare as a human right, college debt forgiveness, the end of private prisons, and the prevalence of economic inequality.   The young people upon whom an impression was likely made are part of the same generation that is now politically engaged, running for office on progressive platforms and organizing their own communities around similar goals.  

No movement or collection of people is ever going to be perfect and OWS definitely had its shortcomings, but for every person that participated in those protests, there were millions who empathized with them and believed in their cause.  Sometimes that is the most important effect of protesting: letting people know they are not alone in their frustration of the injustices in our society and that there are many others who will fight with them to create the change they want to see. 

                99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, Aaron Aites, Audrey Ewell, Nina Krstic, (US: Field Pictures, et al., January 20, 2013) Digital Stream

                Peter Linebaugh, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016) p. 159