“Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around”. - Glenn Beck
You may not have heard, but people are getting angry. Really angry.
They’re angry about the social and economic inequality, income disparity, corporate greed and crime and the influence of corporate money on governments. United under the mantra ‘We are the 99 %’, the Occupy movement utilises strikes, marches, occupations of land and use of social media to create and express unrest.
The movement claims to be inspired by the Spanish Indignants movement, in turn inspired by the Arab Spring. The epicentre of the movement is the world’s financial hub: Wall Street, with demonstrations ongoing from September 17th. By October 9th, similar demonstrations had been held in 70 major cities and on October 15, a global day of protest saw events occurring in Australia’s capital cities
But there’s confusion in the media and public alike over what exactly the movement’s aims are and whether or not all the clever cardboard signs and noise will ever actually achieve anything.
How relevant is this to us and why should we care?
Detractors (and they are numerous) have dismissed the Occupy movement as little more than a collective histrionic tantrum by kids who listen to too much Rage Against the Machine. There’s a mixture of lofty contempt and bemusement in the way that the media has covered the Occupy movement’s participants and their actions. The philosophy of the movement itself has also come under fire, with critics stating that the protestors brandishing their Sony cameras, Nike sneakers and enough Starbucks pseudo-italiano in their bladders to sink a boat are just ungrateful hypocrites, gnawing at the hand that feeds them.
While the movement has been denigrated as an unprincipled lashing out against the very free market that they benefit from, this is a gross mischaracterisation.
The Occupy movement isn’t against all corporations, free enterprise and capitalism per se, but the corruption and exploitation extant within them. It’s quite clear that what we have now is not a free market but rather ‘socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor’. The ‘invisible hand’ is busy giving the rich a quick wristy under the table and then wiping itself off on the rest of us.
These problems are real issues relevant socially and politically to people beyond rock-throwing anarchist hoodlums. Occupy’s global repeal is a clear rejection of the status quo and the broad inequalities it continues to engender.
Maybe they won’t themselves change the world’s economic structure, their activism brings issues to the public attention. It’s a shame that most of the attention has been diverted from the message to the messengers.
No, these people don’t have the answers, but they have some pretty good questions. Why should people have to suffer for the greed and incompetence of others? Why should the wellbeing of banks and corporations take precedence over people? Why should 1 % of the population hold so much ill-gotten money and power over the other 99 %?
The Occupy movement is a manifestation of the friction that exists between the people who carry the system and the people exploiting it.
“We are the 99%” holds meaning beyond income or class level—it reflects the absence of assets, control and power for the 99 % of the population who are most affected by the economy on a daily basis. In the U.S, the top 1 % of households own 34.6 % of all privately held wealth while the bottom 80 % own only 15 %.
Say what you will about the legitimacy of the protestors themselves, the movement, the events, but there is no denying the legitimacy of their grievances.
