Occupy Wall Street - Essay Example

? Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street resonated and came together as a demonstration against economic injustice and corporate greed. Their rallyingcry was “we are the 99%,” which is refers to the fact that the upper 1% of the United States controls much of the wealth in the country (Hardt & Negri, 2011). It was also a protest against the lack of political representation for those who are not wealthy in this country. The group was formed partially in response to the 2008 economic collapse, which was seen as the fault of the large banks in this country, and partially because the fact that the group sees that this country simply has too much economic inequality between the haves and the have nots. Their message is that what is good for Wall Street is not necessarily good for the country. Another message is that democracy is supposed to be for the people and by the people. Instead, our country is being run by big moneyed interest, in that these are the people who can afford to essentially “buy” politicians, so that these politicians work for them, not for us (Hardt & Negri, 2011). Because this was a grass roots group that rose up to fight what is going on in this country, and the values were seen as liberal, there was talk that the movement was considered to be the “tea party of the left” (Tarrow, 2011). However, Tarrow (2011) argues that this comparison is not entirely appropriate. As Tarrow (2011) notes, the Tea Party had a clear ideology and knew exactly what it stood for – the Tea Party was against the federal government becoming too big, and it is against the people giving their hard-earned tax dollars to the federal government. In contrast, Tarrow (2011). states that the Occupy Wall Street movement was not political, as is the Tea Party, and, unlike the Tea Party, did not put forth any policy proposals. The movement, according to Charles Tilly, a sociologist, was not necessarily to agitate politically, but, rather, was to announce that they are visible. It was designed to give visibility to the 99% of the country that is not served adequately by the government. However, even though the group started with great promise, in that the nation was riveted to them and their cause, and the Occupy movements spread across the nation and the world in 2011, the group eventually ran out of national steam and did not change the contours of politics for a variety of reasons. This essay will look at the movement and the reasons why it was unable to really change national politics or policies. Even though the group had a tremendous level of visibility when it was formed, the movement was not as successful in changing politics as the Tea Party was, because it did not get politically involved and did not really agitate for change. The movement’s goals was really, as Tarrow (2011) notes, was more just to let Washington know that the people exist and to protest the fact that the country is run as a meritocracy, not as a democracy, as it is supposed to. However, it never really made any moves to actually change Washington. It did not endorse candidates for office, and it did not put forth any specific policy demands. Because of this, the movement was not as successful as it could have been in actually changing the country. In one way it was clearly a success, however, and that was in bringing people together to try to fight for the cause. People joined because they were angry. They were seeing that protests everywhere in the world, from the Middle East to other parts of the world, were having success in changing what was going on their countries (Schneider, 2011). They were feeling disillusioned and invisible, and felt like they didn’t have a voice in the government. They were seeing that big banks got a bailout, and the people seemed to get nothing but the shaft. It was this anger that caused the e-mail on July 13, 2011, to go viral, and ended with an occupation of Zucotti Park in New York City that lasted many months. There was one “fatal flaw” that meant that the group would not have as much of a lasting change as it should have, and that was that there wasn’t a hierarchy at all. In fact, the group prided itself for its very lack of hierarchy and leadership (Schneider, 2011). Everybody was seen as equal to everybody else. The way that the group communicated was through a human microphone – there wasn’t an actual microphone, but, rather, a person would speak, and the people up front would repeat it to the people behind that person, and the people behind them would repeat to the people behind them, and so forth (Schneider, 2011). While this was a good thing, because the ethos of the group is that no one person is more important than any other person, it was also bad, because the group was never able to change Washington in the manner that it wanted to, because the lack of leadership meant that there was also a lack of coherent goals and strategies. As for the countercultural status of this group, it ss countercultural because its very existence was as a protest against the dominant culture in this country that is ruled by the very elite and wealthy. At the same time, however, it wasn’t exactly countercultural, because it is a populace movement and purports to speak for the people – all of the people, or at least 99% of the people. The way that it challenges the mainstream is that it speaks out against money in politics and the wealth being so concentrated in the hands of the very few. This would be speaking out against the mainstream ideas in Washington, because Washington is a place where big money rules, and the politicians are in the pocket of big corporations. Its message was successful for awhile, as it focused the conversation on income inequality and the conduct of the banks, and, in fact, focused the 2012 presidential election on the issue of income inequality, as this was one of the mantles that Barack Obama took up during that campaign (Klein, 2012). However, as noted above, since the movement never wanted to get involved with the political process, and there was never a very coherent message or leadership, it seems that the message of Occupy Wall Street has waned over the years, and the energy fell out of the movement when the protestors were evicted from Zucotti Park. Or, as Klein (2012) notes, the movement became scattered after the protestors were evicted from Zucotti Park. The movement is still technically intact, but it is localized, as the original occupiers are concentrating more on local governments and concerns, and not on what is going on nationally. The movement has existed since October, 2011, and their values have changed over time. Previously, the movement was all about focusing national attention upon the problems created by income inequality and the corruption of big money in politics and on Wall Street. Now, the movement is more focused upon issues that affect localities, which might include taking up the cause of poor education in the inner city schools or corruption in local governments. At any rate, the nation is no longer focused upon the movement, so they have become considerably less socially important than they were in October of 2011, at least in terms of the national conversation about the group. They were never really countercultural, as they spoke up for the majority of people, as opposed to speaking for a small group of people, and they continue to be non countercultural. Conclusion Occupy Wall Street really could have been a force for positive change. It started with a group of people camping in Zucotti Park in order to bring attention to greed, the conduct of large banks, and wealth inequality in the United States, and it spread nation-wide. If the group would have had more structure and more of an agenda, perhaps it could have succeeded in changing the political landscape. As it was, it did succeed in getting out the message of wealth inequality – Barack Obama ran on this as part of his platform in 2012. But it did not become as successful as the Tea Party, as the organization was not interested in the political process. It therefore was successful, yet not successful at the same time. References Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. "The Fight for'Real Democracy'at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street." Foreign Affairs 11 (2011). Retrieved from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Library Print Holdings. Klein, Naomi. "Occupy Wall Street: The most important thing in the world now." Critical Quarterly 54.2 (2012): 1-4. Retrieved from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Library Print Holdings. Schneider, Nathan. "From occupy Wall Street to occupy everywhere." The Nation 31.10 (2011): 2011. Retrieved from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Library Print Holdings. Tarrow, Sidney. "Why Occupy Wall Street is not the tea party of the left."Foreign Affairs 10 (2011). Retrieved from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Library Print Holdings. Read More