I haven’t posted in too long. I’ve started several post but finished none. I’ve been intrigued with the occupy wall street movement. In my opinion anyone who believes the system has gotten out of hand can’t help but have noticed the movement. I think by now; day 16, a good portion of the general population has heard about the protest. There’s still a larger who have most likely not heard of the movement at all.
I remember seeing the original call to occupy wall street. I honestly admit I didn’t realize ad busters had initiated it until I started working on this post. You can see part of it below:
When first reading the call I wondered how many individuals would turn out. Would this be our chance? Would this be the spark that would light a revolution or would if fizzle out before it got a chance to ignite. I then forgot about it, It slipped my mind.
However over the past few weeks the media coverage has increased. The support has also increased and I felt like I should at least address the subject.
I also feel compelled by the movement, the “We are the 99%”. I see a lot of hardworking people all around me on a daily basis. For the most part they’re all just looking for an honest pay for an honest days work. I also feel like the large corporations have gotten out of hand. It seems like the bottom line is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Finally I often feel like the government doesn’t really reflect the interest of the people but rather of the companies that are able to lobby ($).
For those who don’t know me, I consider myself a bit of a computer nerd. It’s been interesting to have grown along with the world wide web. It’s gone from a bunch of folks using dial up modems to something a large portion of the world uses daily. Now what does being a computer nerd have to do with the occupy wall street movement? Settle in and I’ll attempt to connect the dots as I see them.
It’s important to bring some things into context: The Arab spring was still in bloom. The best visually informative guide I’ve found of this is at the guardian. I’ve taken a screenshot below to explain how it works. You can use the slider on the top to move forward or backward in the timeline. When you scroll through the timeline you can read articles about events which occurred in that specific country. Each country being indicated on the bottom of the page (and picture below).
There’s now a possibility it may need to be updated. On July 13th a magazine called ad busters released a call for peaceful demonstration to occupy wall street on September 17th. Part of that call was shown at the beginning of this post. A few weeks later, on August 23rd the hacktivist group Anonymous encouraged it’s followers to support the effort.
Now I suspect some of you read the word hacktivist and rolled your eyes or you might have asked yourself “What’s a hacktivist? What’s Anonymous, who are these people and why do they wear silly mask?” I think in basic terms it’s people using technology to subvert oppression. Think of them as a big brother to big brother.
Their motto is simple “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” There is no “president”. You may have seen them at various protest as we often wear Guy Farks masks.
Many of you encountering anonymous for the first time may ask yourselves why the “masks”? One of the more basic uses of the mask is to hide the individuals identities. If there is no one leader he or she can’t be stopped, arrested or killed. Being technologically savvy, we/they realize just how easy and dangerous it is to be identified by a picture in our day and age. Just appearing at a protest can get you on several government “watch list” and we live in “democratic” countries. Now I highly suspect that most of my audience will have not heard of anonymous. Maybe a quick headline or two but nothing more. With that in mind I include one of their occupy wall street support videos.
Don’t let the funky voice or masks scare you. This is how most of their communications are sent out. It may seem childish, it may seem “scary” but listen to the message and tune out the delivery.
The Occupy Wall Street movement started with a simple call to arms. At first it didn’t get much press attention. There were accusations of a media blackout. That all changed a few days ago. There have been two incidents captured on camera which have added fuel to the fire. One video was of protesters being looked down upon from a balcony by people with champagne in an imposing building. I can’t confirm who these people were but the video provided fuel for the protesters.
The second incident is the one that in my opinion forced the media to take notice. But let’s be clear it wasn’t of their own choice. In the video a officer walks up to a group of protesters, pepper sprays them without warning and then sneaks away into the crowd. The screams of agony by the girl who got the pepper spray directly in the eyes leaves no doubt as to how much pain she was in. I didn’t see any reason that the situation required the use of the pepper spray. Judge for yourself.
I think it’s important to point a few things out: Now in the past the police would most likely have gotten away with doing things like this. Cameras would not have been in the hand of almost every individual in the march/protest/movement. Let alone the ability to “upload it” to the internet and to the millions of citizens around the world.
However in our particular incident it was caught on not one, but several cameras. It was rebroadcasted, slowed down and reprocessed to identify the officer in question. Almost as soon as the event occurred the footage was on the internet. It brought the movement media coverage and interest.
Secondly, It didn’t take very long before the officer in the video was identified. Here is where the technological revolution has given the people the upper hand. The officers name, personal contact information and on the job history appeared online shortly afterwards, with all the consequences that entails. Turns out he’s under investigation for another incident involving protesters earlier in his career. But the focus of this post is not the officer or his behavior in all of this, other than to perhaps point out it brought attention to the movement.
The focus of this post is about us, the 99%. The law abiding, hard working people of this world. The ones who don’t have the millions of dollars to lobby. The ones who aren’t big enough to “not fail”. There have been lots of great posters shown from the protest. Some of my favorites that I’ve seen were:
- “Too big to fail is too big to be allowed”
- “The people are too big to allow to fail”
- “I can’t afford a lobbyist”
- “Corporations are psychopaths”
and one of my personal favorites “The whole world is going bankrupt to who? Debt = slavery”.
Since then a few stars dropped by. Pilots had their own protest where they marched in silence in their uniforms and in solidarity to their occupy wall street brothers and sisters. Now unions have begun backing the movement. More cities have joined and are joining the call and a worldwide demonstration is being planned for Oct 15th.
Watch the video, show your support and be there on the 15th.
The people occupying wall street have started mobilizing for the long haul. They’ve set up a small village with a kitchen and the rumour is the food is well received. A media center has been established as has a first aid center. The people are also organizing and preparing to publish their own magazine with funding through kickstarter. I’ve talked about Kickstarter previously, describing it as funding from the masses. They were hoping to raise 12000$ in order to publish. They raised 32000$ when I last checked with several days remaining before the funding period closes.
A call went out for sleeping bags, ponchos and large clothes a few days ago. From what I’ve read the donations have been coming in steadily. Although I can’t be in New York myself I wanted to do something in my own way to show my solidarity with the movement. To say enough is enough to big businesses (banks and governments). To say that we can build a better world today so that our future generations won’t end up in the same situation were in now. We are the 99%. I can’t afford someone to lobby for me.
- If you want to know exactly what the protesters are up to, visit the official general assembly website for the occupy wall street movement.
- You can find the occupy wall street website with lots of daily news here.
- For news about anonymous you can check here and here.
I hope we actually see some real change from these events. I thought I’d encourage it any way I could. It seemed a good reason to post.
