The Occupy Wall Street movement is attracting a global following of people who are frustrated with a political system they say favours corporations and the super-rich.
In the less than three weeks since protesters first converged in lower Manhattan, similar demonstrations have already cropped up in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, and organizers in dozens of other countries – including Canada – say they will do the same. Here’s what you need to know about the movement.
How it works
The city erected metal barricades near the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall before the protest began, preventing the protesters from occupying their target directly. Instead, hundreds have set up a base camp in nearby Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan – since renamed Liberty Square by the protesters.
Demonstrators have been told not to set up tents or other structures, so many of those who stay overnight usually sleep directly on the ground, tucked into a sleeping bag, sometimes with a tarp wrapped around them to keep the rain away.
The group goes to great pains to keep the park clean, with volunteers signing up to clear away litter each day. Other chores include cooking in a makeshift kitchen, working at a medical station and handing out flyers and pamphlets at an information booth. A single table with a few chairs is the occupation’s media centre, where volunteers work off a generator and a series of wireless cards. Protesters also publish and distribute their own newspaper, cheekily called the Occupied Wall Street Journal, to get their message out in broadsheet form.
But the main event is the daily meeting called the general assemblies, held to plan all aspects of their occupation, from gathering supplies to determining where to march and how to communicate with the media. The assemblies are open to anyone who wants to participate, and the minutes from the meetings are posted online.
A New York bylaw prevents anyone from using a bullhorn or megaphone without a permit, so the protesters have adopted a system they call “the people’s microphone” to communicate with each other during large meetings. Someone shouts a message, a few words at a time, to the crowd, and then everyone who heard those words repeats them together for the benefit of those farther away. It’s an excruciatingly slow way to communicate, but it gets the message across.
Their demands
Several lists of demands have been posted on the Occupy Wall Street website, but ideas and opinions still run the gamut, from scrapping the federal reserve bank to raising taxes on corporations and offering free college education.
The incoherence has sparked criticism, both within the movement and from observers, but some say it’s just the nature of starting a grassroots movement. “The protest comes first and serves as its own organizational tool,” one poster wrote on an online forum for Occupy Wall Street. “The protesters determine their own demands. Messy, but much more democratic, yes?”
What they could accomplish
David Meyer, author of The Politics of Protest and a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, said confusion about the protesters’ goals is a barrier to bringing about change because it’s easy for observers to dismiss the group.
But if the protests continue to grow in the United States, he said they could act as a counter-balance to the Tea Party, which has galvanized protesters on the right.
“If it works, if they’re effective, you’ll see pre-established activists and institutional politicians on the left becoming more vigorous, and more visible,” Mr. Meyer said. “There could be a political price to pay if they sign off for deals that, [for example,] don’t support progressive taxation.”
