Occupy Places: A Political Movement or A Collaborative Complaining?

By Danielle Williams

Occupy Wall Street started on September 17, 2011 in New York City to protest the unequal distribution of wealth between the wealthiest 1% of the country and the other 99%. The protests started out as demonstration based in Zuccotti Park and have spread across the country to over 70 major cities, 600 U.S. communities and 900 cities worldwide.  For the most part, the protesters have camped out in front of their local governments buildings and businesses to give a voice to the 99% who are paying – both literally and figuratively for the actions of the 1%. But I have a question: How do the protesters think this will end?

Firstly, everyone has a different focus, so not just the Occupiers will come out of the demonstrations better than when they went in. They started out with a noble goal: to bring Wall Street to justice for putting our economy in the drain and facing virtually no consequences while the 99% are the ones who face these consequences in the form of layoffs, higher taxes, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.

With no help from the local, state, or federal government, people took to the streets over a shared feeling of being ignored by the government or treated like a consumer and not a person. It seems like more of a “We’re still here, and you’re going to have to start paying attention,” protest rather than a push for policy change, which would take a long time to pass and an even longer time to implement.

So I ask the question again, with each community fighting for separate concerns in various places and with all of the arrests and animosity on both sides, how do protesters want this battle to end?