By Alexei Summers (Contributor) – Email
Date Posted: October 31, 2011
Print Edition: October 26, 2011
On the 17th of October it was the one-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s been a whole month, and the protests all over the continent are still going strong.
And just to recap: North America and her citizens are pissed right off right now. They feel like they’ve been lied to, and because of that lie, they feel that their very way of life is crumbling beneath their feet. On the day of September 17th, a gathering of angry Americans took to the streets and occupied Wall Street. This is has since become known as the Occupation Movement, and it has sprung up in over 900 more cities, and towns. The protesters erected tents, waved signs and banners, most of which bore the slogan “We are the 99 per cent.”
The movement was created in response to the American debt-ceiling crisis. It was a peaceful protest; all carried out within legal means, under freedom of assembly, yet numerous police brutalities occurred throughout the course of the Occupy Wall street campaign. Protesters wearing masks were arrested by police using a law that dated back to 1845, which bans masked gatherings in the United States of America. Women were reportedly maced by police officers, completely unprovoked. The elite Internet hacktivist group Anonymous, who has a long history of taking part in protests, responded to this by threatening New York Police in a statement, saying, “If we hear of brutality in the next 36 hours then we will take you down from the internet as you have taken the protesters voices from the airwaves.”
What is the protest about, you may ask? Everything. The protest is simply about everything. It is about healthcare, the poor state of the economy, struggling middle class workers without jobs, unequal redistribution of wealth, US foreign policy, and a seething contempt for the inequity of the entire system. A system they trusted, a system that has failed them. The protest on Wall Street is about the depression we have for our future. When I think about what the future will be like, I see a bleak existence, where my children will probably have to be paying $200,000 a year to attend the school they want to go to. I foresee the money being tight. I don’t want to be like my grandfather, always being so frugal because he grew up in the depression, never letting his children have anything. I want a good life, with security, and peace of mind that I won’t go to the poorhouse even if I break my back working every day of my life.
And I don’t want that fate for my children, either. It is a frightening future which looms on the horizon, and the anger of the public is justified. This is a revolution, this whole Wall Street business. Not one with armed insurrection fought in jungles through guerilla warfare, per se. This is a revolution of thought, and a revolution of bold outcry against the machine. America’s citizens are letting their government know that they don’t want this anymore. They’ve had enough, the system has failed. They want real change. And who better to be the source of the change, than from the man who promised “HOPE” and “CHANGE” in big bold letters on his campaign signs? On October 16, President Barack Hussein Obama’s White House issued a statement regarding the Wall Street Occupation, extending his support to the protesters, and claiming to be working in their interests.
The march continued on, though, in various locations, and locales. Many cities are being occupied by similar protests even as you read this article. They are making a stand against injustice. They are making a stand against the dark bleak future looming over all of our heads, lingering in the back of minds. They are taking a stand.
Even in Vancouver the Occupation continues, and I suspect it will continue until the message has gotten across. So let me just be the first to say, happy one month anniversary Occupation Movement, and good luck.
