Occupy the world-a movement in progress

Beginning with the revolutionary waive of demonstrations and protests in the Middle East, dubbed the Arab Spring,  (click here to see an interactive timeline of the Arab Spring Protests from the Guardian On-line) and Anti-austerity Protests world wide, "Occupy" Movements are popping up all over the globe like mushrooms after a rain. In the U.S. the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement officially began on September 17, 2011 in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district. 

 

According to the Vancouver Courier on-line, OWS  began in part from: “ …the work of the Vancouver-based Adbusters Media Foundation, an anti-consumerist group best known for its award-winning, advertisement-free magazine, Adbusters.”  Reflecting the frustration by an ever increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth and handling of the recent global financial crisis, the magazine urged readers to take to the streets to demand change. In the Vancouver Courier article, Adbusters senior editor Micah White was quoted as saying, “We basically floated the idea in mid July into our [email list] and it was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world. It just kind of snowballed from there. We came up with the idea but independent activists just made it their own. They set up an organizing website, starting holding weekly meetings and these are the people who are now pulling it off. They made it their own and ran with it.”

 

News about these movements is exploding while memes like " We are the 99%" are being created and spreading as the basic core issues of drastic inequity in wealth, unemployment and declining standards of living resonate with citizens of all countries and members of all communities. Watching this develop is like watching in timelapse the exponential growth of a tropical garden and serves as a sociological laboratory as the various movements develop and spread.

 

One of the criticisms of the OWS movement in the mainstream media is that it has no leaders, no demands and no program for changing things (see N.Y. Times-sunday Review, Nov. 12, 2011). For example, in a CNN.com article, Ehab Zahriyeh states, "The Occupy movement has clear frustrations with corporate greed, unregulated banks and the housing crisis. Protesters are disappointed in President Obama and his administration for bailing out the banks and not the people. They have dozens of other grievances and continue to debate strategy and priority. But these demands do not call for clear solutions. Unlike Egypt, where removing a decades-long presidency was a major success, in the United States, there aren’t any high-profile figures to remove that will satisfy the protesters, not even temporarily."  However, others suggest that this is not the case and while the movement is in it’s early gestation stage there are clear articulations of the movement’s grievances, demands and proposals for change – See the links below.

 

• New York City General Assembly, Currently occupying Zuccotti Park-Declaration

• What is Occupy Wall Street? The history of leaderless movements
• Occupy Wall Street over? Not so fast, marchers say

• Occupy Movement’s Other Accomplishment: Spurring Cooperation Among Progressives
• The99PercentDeclaration
• Occupy Boston Takes Stand Against Predatory Lending and Illegal Foreclosures

• The Occupied Wall Street Journal is only one of many un-official newspapers of Occupy Wall Street
• Occupy Wall Street.org
• Occupy together.org

• Local Community Member, Lauren Oliver traveled with veteran radio reporter Maia Chong to various Occupy movements.  Use the player below to hear a report from the Occupy San Francisco site on Nov. 12, 2011:

• KMUD Community Journalist, Kerry Reynolds, visited Occupy Wall Street (OWS) during the final days of the nearly 2-month encampment of Zuccotti Park (AKA Liberty Square) and she produced this report, which includes the concept of "Working Groups" within the OWS Movement. The encampment was evicted on November 15th, 2011.  Use the player below to hear or download the report.

{mp3} news/FinalDaysof2monthOWSencampmentR {/mp3}

• November 17th, 2011, was a ‘Day of Action’ on Wall Street, when occupiers and thousands of supporters took to the streets in NYC’s financial district and all around Manhattan to mark two-months since the start of the Liberty Square Occupation. Over 250 were arrested.   Use the player below to hear or download the report by KMUD Community Journalist, Kerry Reynolds.

 {mp3} news/OWSNov 17DayofActionR {/mp3}