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The
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Street definition is
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The following definition of
Occupy Wall
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2011 from the website page
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(Occupy
Wall Street).
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Occupy Wall Street (OWS)
is an ongoing series of
demonstrations in New York City
based in
Zuccotti Park in the
Wall Street financial district.
The protests were initiated by the
Canadian activist group
Adbusters.[6][7]
They are mainly
protesting social and
economic inequality, corporate
greed, corporate power and influence
over government (particularly from
the
financial services sector), and
of
lobbyists.[8][9][10]
The participants' slogan "We
are the 99%"[11]
refers to the
difference in wealth between the
top 1% and the other citizens of the
United States.[5]
The
movement has been criticized for
having no goals or formal demands.
Others see it as a "democratic
awakening," whose motives are
difficult to formulate into a few
demands. On October 15, the
New York City
General Assembly Demands Working
Group published demands,[12][13][14]
but did not achieve consensus.[15]
The Goals Working Group may produce
an alternative document.[16]
By October 9,
similar demonstrations were
either ongoing or had been held in
70 major cities and over 600
communities in the U.S.,[17]
including the estimated 100,000
people who demonstrated on October
15.[18][19]
Internationally, other
"Occupy" protests have modeled
themselves after Occupy Wall Street,
in over 900 cities worldwide.[20][21][22][23]
In mid-2011, the Canadian-based
group
Adbusters Media Foundation, best
known for its advertisement-free
anti-consumerist magazine
Adbusters, proposed a
peaceful occupation of Wall Street
to protest corporate influence on
democracy, address a growing
disparity in wealth, and the absence
of legal repercussions behind the
recent global financial crisis.[6]
According to the senior editor of
the magazine, “[they] 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.”[6]
They promoted the protest with a
poster featuring a dancer atop Wall
Street's iconic
Charging Bull.[30][31]
Also in July, they stated that,
"Beginning from one simple demand –
a presidential commission to
separate money from politics – we
start setting the agenda for a new
America."[32]
Activists from
Anonymous also encouraged its
followers to take part in the
protest which increased the
attention it received calling
protesters to "flood lower
Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens,
peaceful barricades and occupy Wall
Street".[33][34]
Adbusters'
Kalle Lasn, when asked why it
took three years after
Lehman Brothers' implosion for
people to storm the streets said:
When the financial meltdown
happened, there was a feeling
that, "Wow, things are going to
change. Obama is going to pass
all kinds of laws, and we are
going to have a different kind
of banking system, and we are
going to take these financial
fraudsters and bring them to
justice." There was a feeling
like, "Hey, we just elected a
guy who may actually do this."
In a way, there wasn't this
desperate edge. Among the young
people there was a very positive
feeling. And then slowly this
feeling that he's a bit of a
gutless wonder slowly crept in,
and now we're despondent again.[35]
Although it was originally
proposed by Adbusters
magazine, the demonstration is
leaderless.[36]
Other groups began to join the
protest, including the NYC General
Assembly and U.S. Day of Rage.[37]
The protests have brought together
people of
many political positions.
Professor Dorian Warren from
Columbia University has
described the movement as the first
anti-authoritarian populist
movement in the United States.[38]
A report in
CNN said that protesters
"got really lucky" when gathering at
Zuccotti Park since it was
private property and police could
not legally force them to move off
of it; in contrast, police have
authority to remove protesters
without permits from city parks.[39]
Prior to the protest's beginning
on September 17, New York City mayor
Michael Bloomberg said in a
press conference, "People have a
right to protest, and if they want
to protest, we'll be happy to make
sure they have locations to do it."[37]
The protests have been compared to
"the movements that sprang up
against corporate
globalization at the end of
1990s, most visibly at the
World Trade Organization summit in
Seattle"[40]
and also to the
World Social Forum,[41]
a series in opposition to the
World Economic Forum, sharing
similar origins.[42][43]
A significant part of the protest is
the use of the slogan, "We
are the 99%," which was partly
intended as a protest of recent
trends regarding increases in the
share of annual total income going
to the top 1% of income earners in
the United States.[44][45][24][46]
A central concern of the OWS
movement is the growing
economic inequality in the wake
of the financial crisis. Economists
Ravi Batra and
Robert Reich have argued that
increased inequality is associated
with speculative manias and
depressions.[47][48]
Batra popularised the use of the
term "share of wealth held by
richest 1%" in the 1980s.[49]
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