Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street

Introduction

Occupy Wall Street is a branch of the protest action movement that since 17 September 2011 has occupied the Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan in New York City , United States. This concentration of protest is directed against the absolute power of businesses, and tax evasion, and is inspired by the protests in Spain in 2011 that came with the 15-M Movement. On September 27, there were protests in 52 cities, including Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. Although the movement has no leaders, at first it was organized by the magazine Ad-busters. In August 2011, the group Hacktivist Anonymous encouraged its followers to endorse the protest, increasing the number. The organizers expected 20,000 protesters to gather on Wall Street, the financial district of New York, but the co-founder of the magazine Adbusters, Kalle Lasn, said he expected to see even 90,000 (Wagner, 2012). After the economic crisis of 2008-2011 that left many countries on the brink of bankruptcy, with weak economies and high unemployment, a Canadian group, the "Adbusters Media Foundation", proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street in protest against the leadership of the government policies of the United States and their failure to prevent or make effective changes in the global financial crisis. Micah White, Adbusters magazine editor said about it: "We launched the idea in mid-July on our email list and then was taken spontaneously by all peoples of the world. It grew from there as a snowball. Several activists encouraged their followers to become a part of the protests, which helped increase the case provided. Other groups followed, including the General Assembly of the City of New York.

Discussion

Moral and Economic Implications Involved in the Movement

The main issues which led to the occupy Wall Street Movement, includes economic and social inequality, corruption and greed. According to The New York Times, all these acts of corruption and inequality were running under the influence of the government and corporations. One percent of the richest people today scoop 23% of the national income while thirty years ago it was only 6%. At the same time, about 50 million Americans live in poverty, and one in four African American and Latino living below the poverty line, and 1 in 9 African-Americans aged 20-34 are sent to prison (Wagner, 2012). Over the decade, the average income of the American middle-class families fell by 7% and the poorest families earning less by as much as 12%. It is not only the lack of opposition to the opportunities of the young generation. This is opposition to the political system in which the interests of ordinary citizens are ignored by policy-makers. As shown by the statistics, in the last three / four decades, wages in the financial sector and the private sector totally ran over. The aim of the demonstrations is continuously occupying Wall Street, the financial district of New York, to against greed and the change of perception of corporate social ...