Occupy Wall Street

The setting of “OWS” happens to be in the same context as “Bartleby the Scrivener” since Bartleby literally does occupy Wall Street. Both of these stories happened in New York, basically 150 years apart. Throughout the story, he lives in the office of the narrator, as the narrator states, “he made my office his constant abiding place and home” (Melville, 59). The office Bartleby lived in was set up in a way so he was away from everyone and his only view was a brick wall (Melville, 52). The people who occupied Wall Street “poured into streets in protest and began symbolic occupations of public squares” (Calhoun qtd in OWS). Bartleby and the people of “OWS” both had no movement in the sense that they were “being treated with little of the dignity owed to citizens” (Calhoun qtd in OWS). It is not

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.

On September 17, 2011 hundreds of people began to gather in Zuccotti Park, New York which is Wall Street’s financial district under the banner “Occupy Wall Street”: these three simple words are causing an uproar in America (Engler). Additionally, these three words happen to be protesting the current status of America’s financial condition. With the economy in America being as terrible as it is, and the unemployment rate skyrocketing, it is absolutely necessary for some sort of change to occur. The Occupy Wall Street protesting is most positively a progressive step for the economic state in America and it is a step in the right direction.

The March on Washington was a march for jobs and freedom. It was estimated that quarter of a million people attended the march. The march was a peaceful demonstration to promote civil rights and economic equality for African Americans. The marchers marched down Constitution and Independence Avenues. Then they gathered in front of the Lincoln monument for speeches, songs, and prayers. It was televised to millions of people.

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.

Nonviolent movements are widespread across America, but very little are effective enough to create monumental change or to have a lasting impact. In their article "Waging Nonviolence: What makes nonviolent movements explode", Mark and Paul Engler explore what makes nonviolent protests powerful enough to force change. Written in December 2014, the article uses modern and historic examples of protest movements, with the main focus on the Occupy Wall Street movement, to create the context as to what each of the methods discussed has accomplished. Using the main example of Occupy Wall Street, the article showcases two major points, disruption and sacrifice, that nonviolent protest movements utilize in order to have the greatest effect, as well as how those two points work together to create lasting impacts. Disruption relies on interrupting everyday life and preventing business from occurring, while sacrifice focuses on what people are willing to risk and give up in order to see the change they wish for. In their article, the Engler’s propose that while these two methods of protest can be effective, protests rarely become large enough to actually create any change, even if they are combined, simply because the major businesses, corporations, and organizations that are being protested hold incredible amounts of political power and therefore are able to very easily shut down protests with police forces. This argument, that protests are inevitably going to fail, is very realistic

but that will be naive of me. I believe the one percenters rule the world. Nowadays

In early October, OWS got a major boost when prominent labor unions joined protesters in a march from Foley Square to the encampment at Zuccotti Park. Labor leaders have joined the movements in hopes that OWS can act as a counter weight to the Tea Parties growing support, and help push Congress and President Obama to put more focus on job creation. In the protest’s fourth week it gained the support of some major democratic leaders and party fund-raisers, including a top ally of President Obama. It has been said that the embrace of the protests by democrats is a clear sign of their desire to align with disenchanted Americans. On the other hand, many democrats are wary of the movement pushing the party dangerously to the left as the Tea Party movement has often pushed republicans to the right. President Obama has spoken sympathetically of the protests, stating they are a reflection of the frustrations that struggling Americans have felt for a long time. Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi have voiced similar opinions.

Occupy Wall Street’s opposing expression of the disparity between the wealthy and the poor may have begun in good faith by utilizing the Freedom of Speech and General Assembly amendment rights, but the strategies some of the protestors have demonstrated are resulting in adverse reactions against themselves. The Occupy Wall Street movement will assuredly cost affected cities in the double digits of millions of dollars. Increases in payroll, overtime, and business expenses will inadvertently backfire and increase layoffs. The burden the protestors physically place on a city is weighing down an already financially stressed situation. The mass of people and their tent lifestyle is causing a drain on city finances, and alas, the money is coming

In the article “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Joseph Stiglitz, a noble prize winning economist, argues that the upper 1% controls about 40% of all wealth in America. This top 1% has taken about a quarter of all income in America, and has seen their income rise about 18% in the past decade. This has made the inequality between classes in the US expand. Eventually, this inequality gap will even hurt the top 1%, because the other 99% will either fight for a bigger piece or just stop working all together. The top 1% can buy anything they need, but their fate realizes on the other 99% to work hard and not fight back. If the 99% stopped working, there would be a simple way to gain back money… that would be to raise taxes on the rich. However, the rich get rich by capital gains, which have a low tax policy. So overall, the upper percent can eventually learn, but a majority of the time it is too little too late.

Jackie DiSalvo (2015) wrote a paper called “Occupy Wall Street: Creating a Strategy for a Spontaneous Movement”. Her central claim is that Occupy Wall Street movement had the potential to grow and create military, national, class-planned, multi-issue movement that never been planned in our time before, but it was misuse by the anarchist’s influence so the social movement was a failed. She uses Mark Bray’s research and some of her own research to explain why the movement was a failed and how anarchists influence this failed movement. In her article, DiSalvo (2015) splits up her work into four sub topics which was: “Occupy Wall Street Anarchism, Occupy Wall Street Strengths, Sources of Occupy Wall Street Contradictions, and Problems with Anarchism”. She explained in each sub-topic the data that she collected and a conclusion based on this information (DiSalvo, 2015).

If the protesters continue to focus on the gross inequality of outcomes in America, they will get nowhere. There is no equality foundation. Fairness means proportionality, and if Americans generally think that the rich got rich by working harder or by providing goods and services that were valued in a free market, they won’t support redistributionist policies. But if the OWS protesters can better articulate their case that “the 1 percent” got its riches by cheating, rather than by providing something valuable, or that “the 1 percent” abuses its power and oppresses “the 99 percent,” then Occupy Wall Street will find itself standing on a very secure pair of moral foundations.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a leaderless resistance movement. People had joined the movement and participated, no matter what the gender, ethnicity, age, politics, income, occupation and education degree they had. The majority of the protesters are young people under 30 and many of them are unemployed or underemployed. They are frustrated that the hard-working middle class is getting poor, yet Wall Street stays wealthy. In response to the frustration, Occupy Wall Street was initiated on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park. The blog post that sparked the movement was by the Canadian magazine Adbusters, Kalle Lasn and Micah White, Canadian anti-consumerist. In a blog post on July 13, 2011, Adbusters proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest about

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

Does the use of social media have an impact on the involvement of social movements in society?