As an ancestor of Black American Slaves, I am always down for a well-thought out, controversial, minority against all odds protest to showcase inequalities within America.
Like most of the country, I didn’t pay the Occupy Wall Street protest any mind until I noticed that the group was growing in size.
Apparently, most major media outlets also ignored the group as well. For example, one early Sunday morning in August, while watching the, “Wall Street Journal,” the host, Maria Bartiromo briefly mentioned that a group was protesting budget cuts on Wall Street.
Not much else was mentioned about the group until….
September 1, 2011, when around 10 protestors were arrested for disorderly conduct and later released without charge.
Just over one month later, Occupy Wall Street has spread to Europe, Australia, and even Japan.
Occupy Wall Street consists of multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-generational Americans who feel that capitalism has failed. Like similar protests across Europe, Occupy Wall Street represents revolt against failed banking regulation, failed government, and failed justice.
According to occupywallst.org, “Occupy Wall Street is a horizontally organized resistance movement employing the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to restore democracy in America. We use a tool known as a “people’s assembly” to facilitate collective decision making in an open, participatory and non-binding manner. We call ours the NYC General Assembly and we welcome people from all colors, genders and beliefs to attend our daily assemblies.”
Hopefully this movement will reawaken our social consciousness and bring attention to the need to transform our communities and redefine an economy that has not functioned properly in the past 30 years.
For example:
- The top 1 percent of Americans possesses more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
- In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
- According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States is more unequal as a society than either Tunisia or Egypt when it comes to income inequality.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is absolutely critical in bringing to light the issues that face our nation. This movement should not be victimized as a “leftist, young hippie movement” but instead a revolution for Equality within a country that has catered to Wall Street.
Live Positive!
Joveline
Joveline