The Occupy Movement has addressed an important issue that many liberal movements have had difficulty addressing. The Occupy movement is for all members of the public. Different people are free to pursue different issues, and they do, from Police Brutality, to corporate regulation, to sustainable agriculture, and many more. In the past, progressive movements often focused on too narrow a portion of the population, such as gays, women, blacks, immigrants, etc . The problem with this is that certain issues which affect everyone cannot be addressed if everything is simply focused on, for example, gay rights. We're all human beings, and we should be working to ensure we all have our human rights.
The fact that Occupy includes all has
made it a target of some experts in the media. If there's an
exclusively black movement, its easy for them to pull out stereotypes
of black people and say that they are loud and lazy. Or if its
exclusively an immigrant movement, they'd debate whether the US
should allow more immigrants to come. But Occupy, in addition to
including these groups, has a number of speakers who until recently
were the darlings of society. College graduates, and young
professionals, who are supposed to be obedient, polite and non
challenging to authority, have been speaking on how the current
system screws them. Many of these people, after working hard on
their educations and amassing substantial debt, are being asked to
work unpaid internships after graduation. How can for profit
businesses expect people to work for them for free? These
"businessmen" act as if everyone can use magic to provide food,
clothes, and other necessities for themselves. A sign at Occupy that
embodied this was a young woman holding up a sign saying "I have
three degrees, I owe $135,000, my landlord has me in housing court
under eviction proceedings, and no, an unpaid internship will not do
me any good." Business people in the past 20 years have tried to
sucker play recent graduates. They insist we need a good education
in order for them to employ us, yet they'd like for us to work for
them for free or on a temporary basis. In some ways, illegal
immigrants are getting more respect than college graduates. For this
reason, young professionals are now increasingly realizing that they
are a part of the 99%, along with labor union members, those from
minority neighborhoods, and the general working class and poor
populations.
Occupy Wall Street, by including all, has done
other good work. I've seen people of all races/nationalities,
people of both genders, people from junior high school group outs to
Ivy League law school grads interacting in public in ways that simply
just don't happen, especially in a city so divided socioeconomically
(and at times racially and ethnically) like NYC. This is, in
and of itself, a huge achievement. Public space is
transformed as a gathering for all types of people. Its
recreating the city in a way. Typically, in New York City, one needs
money to socialize. People spend a lot of money in bars,
restaurants, or in other places that they go out in. But occupation
shows us you don't need money to meet new people or to assemble in
public. Its forged new bonds and new communities, and this is an
important success.
