By snoadmin
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has grown from a small protest to a massive series of demonstrations. Thousands of people have gathered in New York City to protest the top one percent of wealthy Americans and their influence on the government.
There’s nothing wrong with protesting. In fact, more power to them for exercising their right to free speech. However, the platform of their protest doesn’t make much sense. Demonstrators shouldn’t protest wealth inequality; they should protest what exactly brought about the wealth distribution we are facing now.
The movement is not just contained to New York anymore either. According to Guardian.co.uk, the protests are now in over 70 major cities across the U.S. Similar protests have popped up in other locations around the world including Canada, England and Australia. Comparisons have even been made to the Arab Spring movement that led to the 2011 Egyptian revolution. A movement that was once called “Occupy Wall Street” has now been abbreviated to “Occupy.”
It is very ambiguous what exactly the group wants to achieve with the protests now that they have gone nationwide. They have done a great job of bringing attention to the fact that there is a problem, but they have given very few examples of how they want the problem solved. It is clear that there is an unequal distribution of wealth in the United States and that there is corruption in Wall Street, but without an obvious agenda it is easy for the detractors to write-off the movement as “unfocused.”
The group’s main goal was originally to draw attention to the economic inequality in America. The top one percent of wealthy Americans continues to get richer while the poor get poorer and the middle class is squeezed. Corporate money and wealthy lobbyists continue to fund representatives in Washington, so the needs of the few are often chosen over the needs of the many.
The sentiment is valid, and the movement has certainly drawn the world’s attention, especially after cases of police brutality against the protesters made their way to the news. The only problem is that the group doesn’t seem to have a cohesive goal that they are trying to achieve.
Obama is slowly starting to propose laws to move some of the wealth to the other 99 percent, starting with the “Buffett Rule,” named after millionaire Warren Buffett. This proposal would require all Americans who make over $1 million per year pay a higher income tax than the rest of the country.
The “Occupy” movement has the right idea in fighting for the rights of the middle class and a balanced approach for working-class families. However, now that their protest has grown to a national movement and their platform is so large, they should start to think about forming a specific set of demands.
Keeping the message ambiguous helped to draw attention to the group through spectacle, but now that they have our attention they need to form a cohesive solution, which would also require a culprit to our economic state. This group will be much harder to ignore if they have a more specific message.
There will always be rich people and poor people in a Capitalist society. The problem is that some of the rich in today’s society got there through unfair means. The fight should be for equal opportunity for everyone, and to end corruption. At the moment, it seems that some of the protesters don’t actually know what they are fighting for and simply want to see the rich suffer, which will never change anything.
The movement has been quite a spectacle so far, but without an organized strategy it is unlikely that the protests will have a large impact on Wall Street or on Washington.
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