“We are the 99 Percent!” “From New York to the Bay, Occupy the USA!” “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” Does any of this sound familiar? They are the cries of millions of frustrated, unemployed, angry Americans protesting against an unfair government that grants tax cuts for the richest 1% of our society and values people over profit—such as suspending budgets for widely used institutions such as Planned Parenthood, and public education–while millions of people are struggling to pay the mortgage and medical bills and educate their children, all without going hungry.
On September 17, instigated by a July 13 article written in Canadian activist group AdBusters’ publication advocating for a change in America’s economic structure, one thousand angry US citizens flocked to New York City’s Zuccotti Park (called Liberty Square by OWS protesters) to protest what they deem to be an injustice in our society—the growing difference between the richest 1% of our economy and the rest of people. The CEOs of major companies and yacht-owning millionaires control the bulk of the wealth and yet they usually only pay between fourteen and eighteen percent while lower classes, the “other” 99%–immigrants, minimum wage earners, the middle and lower classes̶–pay up to 35%, according to the Treasury Department. The 99% are trying to eliminate greed, unemployment, and corruption as well as combat the unfair influence that major corporations and rich moguls have in politics. Occupy Wall Street—as the movement has come to be known as—stated on their website, “We can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies of our nation.”
Since then, the movement has spread to eighty countries worldwide, in the same wave as the Middle Eastern riots in this year’s Arab Spring. The Occupy movement has spread to most major cities in the United States, including our very own city of San Francisco. SHCP sophomore Braedon Good ’14 has been regularly attending Occupy SF protests in Justin Herman Plaza since September 24, “When I heard about the operation a month and a half before the protests officially started, I did some research and became quite concerned about my future and the future of the failing capitalistic and ‘democratic’ society we live in. I found out SF would have an occupation from the start date and I went down to check it out every day since then. It has come around worldwide because people are finally realizing that their individual stories and situations were not isolated and the flaws in capitalism and the power of money in modern times is failing huge numbers of the general public so people came together to no longer feel despair or concern alone and expose personal and universal issues. Occupy is a movement without a set demand or goal, this is for the purpose of broadcasting the 99%’s individual stories and waiting for the change to come globally. What I mean by that is, we want everybody to unanimously require change, the rich and the poor. Laborers will not work for corrupt businesses so businesses will no longer be corrupt; if people don’t join banks who break the economy, then the banks will stop ruining the economy, etc. Many people say different things about capitalism, the government, banks and corporations but the only real thing people will all say is they want change although everyone has different ideas on how that will come.”
While the Occupy Movement has been extremely successful in getting publicity through the use of Facebook and Twitter, it has had drawbacks—thousands of protesters have been arrested, those who sleep where they protest are in dire need of tents, sleeping bags, and donations, and the recent issues of police brutality and the use of pepper spray have come up. A video of police lieutenant John Pike casually spraying peaceful Occupy UC Davis protesters with a misty orange cloud of pepper spray circulated online, while on September 24 a video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna macing a group of young female Occupiers appeared on YouTube. Another online clip showed pregnant Occupy Seattle protester Jennifer Fox being maced on November 15 by a police officer who then kicked her in the stomach before a second one slammed into her with his bicycle, causing her to miscarry.
If the Occupy movement continues to progress as recent events have shown and is able to change the way the government is run—that is, to move towards a more socialist-democratic society and away from a capitalist-central one, in which benefits such as free medical insurance and workers’ rights are available to ALL classes,including immigrants, and the rich are relieved of the privileges of their precious tax breaks and made to pay more taxes. This could very well be the single most defining event of the century.
