Yesterday in New York, the Occupiers moved from the cramped streets around Wall Street to Times Square, and an estimated 15,000 people showed up to add their voices. Beneath the bright glow of Time Square’s neon lights, a tourist trap was transformed into a sprawling mass of resistance and protest. There were clashes with police, and dozens of arrests. These protests are not inherently violent, but neither are they stoic. They chanted: “This is what democracy looks like.”
In London, three thousand stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral while Julian Assange tried to get them to chant We Are All Individuals, a little play on the New York protestors who, when told by police that they couldn’t use megaphones, invented their own: when a speaker says a line, they pause, and in unison the crowd repeats it, line by line. In Madrid, an unbelievably large swarm of people filled the Puerta del Sol square as part of the Spanish Indignados, a continually growing protest against the deep cuts to social services designed to stave off default. In Rome, the protests turned violent, and the streets burned.
Today marks one month since protesters begun their occupation of New York. In that time the protests have gone global, spreading to 951 cities in 81 countries. Perhaps as importantly, social media and the web are ablaze, pulsing with the protest and conversation. But it is the United States that is most alive, with hundreds of cities, New York just the most dramatic, alive with young discontent and a new sense of rebellion. As the media get their cameras out, the public starts paying attention, and those on the left start to debate merits and message, we should pause to ask: what is this movement? And could this be the real deal?
Could this be the emergence of a new progressive movement?
In each city these protests emerge, there are local goals and imperatives, but they share some common threads. They share the rejection of what is seen as corporate corruption and greed—perhaps best represented by the companies, like Goldman Sachs, that managed to both contribute to the 2008 economic collapse, and profit from it. They share a call for new regulation, and the empowerment of government as a watchdog on corporate power and protector of the individual. Most powerfully, they share anger and indignity at the record inequality in the U.S. and the world. They claim to represent the 99% of Americans against the outsized power and wealth of the privileged few.
And herein lies the massive potential of the Occupy movements—these are mainstream issues. It is sometimes hard to convey the enormity of the current inequality in the United States, but here are some facts: As of 2009, the top 1% wealthiest Americans control 35.6% of the total net wealth of the United States, while the top 10% control two thirds of all wealth. The bottom 80% of the country, 249 million people, control less than 12.8% of the wealth, the bottom half just 2.5%. That means the top 0.01% of people earn 967 times more income than America’s bottom 90%.
This is America’s primal scream against inequality, that has been echoed around the world. If it is to have a lasting impact, it must be channeled into constructive solutions, engage the wider public, and avoid getting lost in an anti-everything malaise. Things have not been this unequal since the 1920s. Between 1979 and 2009 the average income of the top 1% grew by an astronimical 240%, while average wages for most Americans barely changed. What does this mean? The wealth produced from thirty years of economic growth has not been helping the majority of Americans, but been channeled to a select lucky few. And if you think Australia is immune, income inequality has been steadily growing here too, with one fifth of Australians now controlling two-thirds of the wealth. We have two economies—one that sees millions of resource dollars go to a select few, and a services economy for the rest of us that is floundering. This is not even starting on global income inequality. (Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
These are of course, just statistics. The young people who are on the streets of cities around the world have seen this first hand—they don’t have jobs, or know people who have lost them, they can see hospitals, education and social benefits being cut in order to feed the financial beast. They feel neglected and taunted, by an arrogant corporate elite who have not sacrificed one bit since the Global Financial Crisis. This a feeling that most Americans, and most citizens of the world, can agree with.
And that leads us to the key challenge facing the Occupy Wall Street movement—how to become a mainstream movement, and not be relegated to an angry, anti-capitalist fringe campaign, like the anti-globalisation and anti-WTO campaigners before them who were shunned from the mainstream (largely justifiably). And the Occupiers toe an uneasy line between the two already—their populist message resonates with a world tired of economic forces not working for them, but is tempered by sometimes violent means, by sometimes revolutionary language, and by, well, sometimes looking like dirty hippies.
This is America’s primal scream against inequality, that has been echoed around the world. If it is to have a lasting impact, it must be channeled into constructive solutions, engage the wider public, and avoid getting lost in an anti-everything malaise.
Even by using the term occupation itself, they alienate many. But of course, it was also this intensity of language, this hold nothing back, we’re sick of this shit, mad as hell and not gunna take it sentiment, that got people out in the streets in the first place; that actually created a movement where none had existed before.
Nevertheless, most of the protesters are not socialist loons—but energised, often non-ideological young people, who look at the economic system we have and see only insanity and injustice. It is vital that this is the face of the Occupiers, because a new mainstream progressive movement is so desparately needed right now—in the US and Europe yes, but in Australia too, as much as our seemingly endless resources bubble may make us doubt it.
The explosion of inequality and economic injustice begun with the Tory Troubles of the 70s—When the Reaganator and Thatch took advantage of economic misunderstanding during stagflation to rewrite the rules to favour the wealthy. The policy movement they begun stripped regulations, pulled government out of the economy, and let the markets go wild. Some reforms were good, but the belief that the markets were sacred and government always damaging, led to chaos. The financial sector become dominant, and uncontrollable, and a real libertarian paradise emerged in the United States: wealth became concentrated in the hands of the few, political power became buyable, lesstaxes than money spent became the norm, and regulators were undermined to the point of impotence.
It boiled over in the 2008 economic collapse, and as the financial system burned and the livelihoods of millions devastated, we turned to government to step in and help. What we found, across the developed world, was government too gutted, hated and paralysed to respond. We did not learn our lessons, and have doomed ourselves to an era of no growth. One lost decade will turn into another.
So it’s little surprise, that three years after the collapse, with America, Europe, Japan, and others seemingly unable to act, that protestors would look to the Arab Spring, and see young people standing up. The fight for democracy is drastically different from the fight that young people face in developed nations (as hacks were quick to observe), but it is the same drive that pulls them to the streets: A demand for control over the powers that determine their lives, and the freedom to live those lives well. What Occupy Wall Street faces, is forcing government to rebuild rules that can provide a decent society.
Ultimately, this is a movement of economic justice, and an expression of anguish at the current state of the economic system, and the insurmountable difficulties that seem to arrise whenever positive changes are attempted. Whether it’s the pathetic debate over the Mining Tax, the inability to pump money into the US economy, or the draconian cuts reshaping Europe, rationality is lost and the spirit of equality ignored. We need to do better, and to do that we need to realign our priorities and start talking about the things that matter. That Occupy Wall Street has forced equality and social justice back into our national and international dialogue, something that hasn’t happened since the crusades of the plutocratic pair in the ’70s, is one early success.
So, is this a movement that will change the game, or another bullshit radical fringe group? Remember the Tea Party? The old people who don’t like taxes? No? Nevermind. Is this the real deal?
Well, of course, it’s too early too tell. But what the movement has in surplus is potential; it could go mainstream, and start a progressive renaissance that seeks to again instil sanity and compassion in how we run our world, or it could disappear in a cloud of anti-capitalist indulgence. Whilst cautious, I’m heartened by one thing, shown again and again this year—that when young people stand together, wide-eyed and resolute, amazing things can happen.
Art is by Max, based on this poster. Photos are from Flickr, all Creatives Commons licences, clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
If, incredibly, you want to read more about Occupy Wall Street, I recommend the New Yorker’s take, John Hanrahan’s long piece asking if protest is at a turning point in America, and Jeff Sparrow’s cogent thoughts on Occupy Melbourne.
