Occupy Movement

Occupy Wall Street has been called many things including: unfocused, ungrounded, and silly. Others coin it as “America’s first internet-era movement” (Rushkoff). In quintessence, Occupy Wall Street is a series of protests and demonstrations that oppose the influence that corporate greed has on American Democracy. The protestors manipulate marches and nonviolent demonstrations to express their dissatisfaction with the state of American Politics and economy. This relates to the political science concepts of power, performance democracy, and protective democracy.

The Occupy New Hampshire movement stemmed from Occupy Wall Street, which began in September 2011. Tr.:16. The occupy movement generally consisted of staying in one place until the grievances of the participants are addressed. Tr.:33. Occupy Wall Street sought to address problems such as economic disparity, the growing gap between the classes, and the influence of money on politics. Tr.:13. Every Occupy movement focused on different issues and grievances, usually determined at the first general assembly. Tr.:111.

Protests riots in the United States has proven to an issue for both the country’s financial strength and the unity of the nation. With the presence of social injustices, combined with the increased impact of social media propaganda, protests riots are beginning to reach an all time high. Protest riots destroy individual communities and businesses, jeopardizes the safety of others and taints the protest’s cause by resorting to civil disobedience. Action must be done in order to prevent these random acts of violence from continuing after every social hot topic. The goal is not to prevent citizens from protesting; in fact, this should be encouraged. The goal is to change the way the protests are handled from both the citizens and authority perspectives, in order to prevent these protests from escalating into something dangerous.

The Preemptive dissent is a creative commons documentary that focuses on political policing in the United States of America during the Bush Administration's “War on Terror.” After the events of 9/11, security measures increased by tens of millions of dollars during the meetings of political figures; such as the G20 summit which had Toronto build a five million dollar wall around the meeting place. The security used for these assemblies have been denounced by interest groups and social groups for their use of military tactics. They are examined as being too abrasive while actively silencing protestors and treating them as terrorists at public protests. With the accompaniment of the News Media, and the ability to share almost anything over social

Since the dawn of human civilization, there have been governments. As a species, we have always attempted to efficiently and systematically maintain order. However it is not uncommon for those same governments to turn on the people it protects, as evidenced by the countless tyrants and authoritarian regimes that plague our history. When studying the complex subject of a free or oppressive government, it is rather interesting to look at the stark contrasts between how both of these organizations handle protests against their rules or laws. The authoritarian regime holds absolute power, meaning that nearly any form of complaint against their actions will be met with disregard, or even punishment. However in a free society in which the government must answer to the people, protests are the language of the discontent, signifying to a representative government that change is needed.

The concerns of the majority Americans have no immediate solution as the answer lies in the separated divisions in government. Political stances of Democrat, Republican and Liberal views about Occupy Wall Street have separate and distinct ideals. But, one unified front from all three is that the movement has gotten out-of-hand; caught between the freedom of speech act, and the health and safety of the public from themselves. Michael Kirby Smith, of The New York Times, commented in an article that because of the anti-Semitism displays during Occupy Wall Street, President Barak Obama and House Representative Nancy Pelosi recanted their support for the Wall Street protests. Yet, recently in an article by Mark Whittington of Yahoo News, writes that even though President Obama

I have to admit that even though the Occupy Wall Street Movement has been all over the news I did not truly understand the stance of it, nor did I really get involved with it. While doing research for this paper I was able to get a better understanding of the basis of the movement as well as the facts pertaining to it. The movement started on Wall Street but has spread across the US. The basis of the movement focuses on social & economic inequality, greed, corruption and the influence of corporations on the US government, primarily from the financial sectors of businesses. The main slogan of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is we are the

Started on September 17, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street Movement began in the Financial District of New York City and has received resonance in other American cities as well as to 82 other countries. Concentrating on how the current economic system has affected peoples’ lives, the movement raised issues about the lack in democracy of the financial system, social and economic inequality, and the connection between financial and political power. The income inequality between the rich and the poor was reaching a concerning proportion, and the unequal wealth distribution is emitted in the movement’s slogan, “We are the 99%.” Protestors believed that the movement would send the message that the united, the people would succeed against the corporate power of Wall Street (Bashir, 69) and create a revolution in the global financial structure (Brahm).

The Occupy Wall Street movement began in fall of 2011 in response to a call to arms originating from a digital publication by the name of Adbusters, wherein Americans were urged to “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months” (Adbusters) in order to make themselves heard in what they perceived as their fight against injustice. The movement kicked off in Zuccotti Park (soon dubbed ‘Liberty Square’) in New York, spurring sympathy protests across the nation. The physical occupation of Zuccotti Park came to an end in mid-November of 2011 when the protestors were forcibly evicted by the New York police. Many assumed that this would be the end of the movement,

The Occupy Movement is an international activist movement that fosters social and economic change and originated from the actions of the Occupy Wall Street movement (source #7). The focus is on the Occupy Wall Street movement that was launched on September 17th 2011 and was catalysed by Adbusters activist Micah White. White created a web page about the corruption that was happening surrounding the financial crisis in the United States leading to the most recent recession. Large corporations based in the area of Wall Street have a great deal of wealth and in turn considerable influence on the democratic process. This particular occupy movement is motivated by the revolutionary protests in Egypt and Tunisia. The American protestors were convinced they could have an effect on the government through their protests. What this means is 1 percent of the population holds 35 percent of all stock and the other 99% marginally less (Source #3). Holding this much wealth this 1% has a great influence on democratic decision making. The official website for the occupy Wall Street movement puts it best saying: “aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy” (source #2). The procedure of the Occupy Wall Street movement is quite simple. White outlines on her web page how she wanted 20,000 people to occupy Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. The protestor’s occupied the square, made signs and chanted messages like “We are the 99%”

Have you heard in the news about the Occupy Wall Street Movement of recent years? Starting in September of 2011, people began protesting around the globe about unequal distribution of wealth in the world. Their slogan, "We are the 99%" represents the idea that the general public is the 99 percent and that the other one percent is represented by the wealthiest members of

Violent protests create negative impacts on movements through the vast media coverage which then can hinder that movement’s positive growth and influence on its community. Protest that turn violent cause citizens lose their right to assemble and are injecting negative connotations to their purpose. In the United States, where the idea of advocating for individual rights and representation of a community has pushed it to strive for a proactive democracy, peaceful protests are widely encouraged in order to promote and protect the health, prosperity, and safety of American

. He notes, “Intensified state control over every sphere of socioeconomic life combined with radical decline of the institutions of political democracy” (Poulantzas). Because the state works to conceptualize society though a narrative of control, this allows resistance to be criminalized by adjusting policies to enforce punishments or scapegoating towards those dismantling conforming ideologies. Relating to other works of discourse, Wendy Brown demonstrates how Left movements lose their thrive and legitimacy in her article “Resisting Left Melancholy”. She writes how resistance loses its flame “And When this traditionalism is conjoined with a loss of faith in the egalitarian vision...what emerges is Left that operates without either a deep and radical critique of the status quo or a compelling alternative to the existing order of things” (Brown 26 ). Brown emphasizes the normalization of the status quo through passive politics, as well as how legacies of old tradition, which were based off exclusion and whiteness have enabled a crumbling of resistance movements that allow the modern system to maintain power through

J., 2013, p. 3931). By labelling rioters as criminals, media and society marginalize them. Labelling rioters takes away the focus from the social conditions that provoked the response from the collectivity and leads the authorities to concentrate their effort on taming the rioters. This further encourages police brutality, defined as the use of unnecessary force, such as physical violence and psychological intimidation, by police officers. Empirical research has found inconsistent evidences regarding the role of police in the control of riots. Still, many social scientists believe that police brutality creates a vicious circle; instead of reducing rioting, excessive use of force would most likely provoke more violence and inflame rioters (Myers, D. J., 2013, p. 3932). Riot control training thus becomes primordial for police officers to learn how to deal with collective outburst of violence effectively and efficiently (Rodgers, B. A.,

The Toronto G20 Summit happened in 2010. During this summit the Toronto Police were said to have violated many protestor’s rights; the Toronto Police were also accused of police brutality. This paper will examine my own personal perceptions of the G20 Summit, the impact it had on the police, and the impact it had on the public.Personal PerceptionsWhen I began researching this event I automatically believed that people were exaggerating and the police were just doing their job. My view was skewed to believe the police were in the right, but as I read I started to notice that many incidences reported were reported by multiple sources. I realised that the Toronto Police had done many things wrong. The first article I read was a firsthand experience of how the police acted (Ellis, 2017). I at first assumed that most of it was an exaggeration, and parts of it were. The article claimed several times that all of the over 1000 people were innocent, but that is ludicrous. One account which I was most shocked by said that several people some of which were under the age of 18 were woken in the night by the police, and strip searched; one of the woman under eighteen claimed to have been assaulted by a police officer, and all of which claimed they were “violently arrested” (Ellis, 2017). I believed that account was exaggerated at first, but I read another article which corroborated this account. This article said the Office of the Independent Police Review reported a similar if not the