For weeks now, hundreds of thousands of people have been camped out in New York City in the "Occupy Wall Street" protest. While it has received little media attention, this protest began a huge campaign centered around the slogan "We are the 99%," demanding that high paid CEOs and politicians put aside their "corporate greed" and help Middle America.
The "Occupy Wall Street" protest has now turned into a movement, with similar protests starting up all across the United States. Angry middle class Americans who are fed up with high taxes and high unemployment are finally ready to take a stand.
But is the Occupy Together movement fair? Billionaire Warren Buffett, who allegedly has a lower tax rate than his secretary, is standing beside President Obama for his new jobs act. The complicated "Buffett Rule" would ensure that those with higher incomes pay more in taxes. Despite what seems like support for the working man, Buffett is still one of the "wealthy" being attacked by these protests.
Are all wealthy people greedy and bad? What about Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, whose net worth is upwards of $59 billion, but has given over $28 billion to charity, making him the second-most generous philanthropist in 2007 according to Businessweek? Gates is outdone only by Buffett.
Unfortunately, this is the exception and not the rule. Donald Trump, for example, does not even make the list for being philanthropic. In fact, "The Smoking Gun" released an article entitled "Trump: The Least Charitable Billionaire." (http://goo.gl/WUBaS)
However, it's not charity that these protestors want. They want equality. The website for Occupy Together has free downloadable posters with phrases such as "You have the right to remain silent and let their money speak for you (or you can demand to be heard)" and "Money Talks, 99% Walks."
Many are now beginning to compare the Occupy Together movement with the popular Tea Party grassroots movement. The Tea Party, which began to gain speed in 2009, is seen as the conservative counterpart to Occupy. Both movements include peaceful protests aimed at achieving goals for better government.
Occupy Wall Street, going strong after about a month, has been scattered with incidences of police brutality. The most police interaction for the Tea Party was when Obama asked police in riot gear to stand between the Tea Partiers and the President. There was no interaction between the groups. Now, however, Youtube is littered with videos of police beating and pepper-spraying crowd members in New York. Why the different treatment?
Occupy Wall Street protestors claim that they are peaceful. Some claim that the NYPD notoriously does not treat protestors well. Regardless of the reason, the recent influx of celebrity appearances and media attention at Occupy Wall Street will presumably only bring more protests and strength to the Occupy Together movement. With the upcoming 2012 Presidential Election, this could certainly be the movement to watch.
Excellent post! I am always fascinated with how something becomes a movement, too. I have heard this as well. But I do feel a little about the Wall Street protests as I do about the globalization protests during the Global Summits: What are they really about? Their messages seem all over the place and I'm not quite sure which one(s) to get behind, if any, because I feel a little overwhelmed at the macro, blanket complaints about fundamental aspects of capitalism. How can their grievances be resolved? I wish I knew.
ReplyDeleteProf. Robinson,
ReplyDeleteYou could say the same thing about the Tea Party movement to some extent, though. They claimed to be all about taxes and deficit spending but then when you took a closer look, it was clear that many, if not most, Tea Partiers were actually motivated just as much by their views on abortion, same sex marriage, and race relations (to put it charitably).
Even when you looked at just their economic complaints, they weren't very focused--again, on the surface they claimed that they just wanted taxes and deficits to go down, but then when you looked deeper, they had a lot of macro, blanket complaints (to use your terminology) about government services, even questioning such fundamental aspects of American society such as public schools, medical assistance for the poor, food stamps, environmental protection, and so on.
The real question to me is not so much "Will they get behind a focused message," but "How can the Democratic political class harness this grassroots energy to achieve electoral victory and political change--and do it in a way that doesn't disappoint the protestors.