The Occupy Wall Street Movement Analysis

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.

Bernie Sanders fever is sweeping the across the country. After a credible showing in Iowa, he is well placed to win New Hampshire. The most astonishing thing about this is that he has managed to turn socialism from a taboo in American politics into a norm. His run and prominence has led to 43 percent of Iowa caucus voters to self-identifying as socialist (Scher 2016). The problem is that actual socialists are in some cases rooting against Senator Sanders. His candidacy has led to a split amongst socialists, with some feeling that he is a bona fide socialist while others feel is a “socialist in name only” (Scher 2016).

“The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.”

Bernie Sanders’ political discourse has catapulted him to one of the front-runners of the 2016 presidential race. Sanders’ is bringing forth his thoughts and ideas that represent who he is. The representation precedes how Sanders wants to govern and transport his ideas into meaningful content. One of Sanders key rhetorical strategies has been to bring awareness to how capitalism and politics are intertwined and how this relationship impacts the American people.

With over 9 million votes and 42% of the popular vote in the Democratic Party primaries, one man has started what he calls a “political revolution”. He has gained widespread support for a political ideology that he calls democratic socialism through funneling the anger of Americans toward banks, the upper class, and trade deals. While he may seem appealing to many Americans, his flaws greatly outweigh his strengths. Bernie Sanders should not be the next President of the United States because his economic policies are extremely irresponsible and in some cases dangerous.

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

Bernie Sanders is a socialist and revolutionary force in American politics. He represents a movement against the rising oligarchy that is taking shape in the United States. This uprising

Oftentimes in society conflict arises between people over what is best for our economy and overall society. In modern day America, citizens and politicians alike debate with far-right ideas like Donald Trump along with far-left views like Bernie Sanders. Those in favor of the far-right are often in agreement with theories of the economist, Adam Smith, an inspiration to today’s capitalism. On the other end of the spectrum, the far-left have similar perspectives as those of the philosopher, Karl Marx who believe in socialism. To better understand why people, such as Marx are against our current economic system one must acknowledge that capitalism is an ideology that gives rise to inequality in the world, and human inequality is a result of

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

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%”

Occupy wall street is a great example to show the big and rich corporation are just greedy, during the 2008 Financial World Crisis what lead that to happen is because is rich corporation is being greedy they are trying to look for a low risk but high return investment, so they’re plan was giving people mortgage even though they don’t good credit, so the housing price will skyrocket because back when giving mortgage for people that have good credit mortgage debate was good investment. The Richer corporation wants to be greedy starting to buy more and more of these securities, and they also made loans without verifying income and offered absurd, adjustable rate mortgage with payment people could afford first, but later it will beyond enlarge

Current generations can try and prevent another economic meltdown by starting grassroots organizations like the Occupy movement. The Occupy movements slogan is "We are the 99%" this is referring to the fact that 1% of the population in the United States holds more wealth that the other 99%. Some of the ideas about preventing another economic crisis have come from Kalle Lasn of Adbusters whose magazine published their thoughts on the matter which included restricting banking-industry regulations, banning high frequency trading, arrest and prosecuting the executives responsible for the economic breakdown in 2008, as well as creating a commission to investigate financial impropriety within the White House. In an article from Bloomsberg Business

The current issues of Capitalism in America is a grave concern to Americans. There is even a declared democratic socialist running for the Democrat nomination right now and garnering a lot of support. Specific issues this candidate is discussing that are facing Americans are issues of income inequality where the top .01 percent makes an average of 27 million per household whereas the bottom 90 percent makes an average of 31,000 a year, free college, and relations with harmful countries. This could all be related to the ideas of Karl Marx in the communist manifesto like a class struggle, or whom should own means of production, or relations with horrid countries.