Origin
In a July 13, 2011 blog post, the Canadian-based Adbusters Foundation, best known for its advertisement-free anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy, the absence of legal repercussions for the bankers behind the recent global financial crisis, and a growing disparity in wealth.[5][6] They sought to combine the symbolic location of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square with the consensus decision making of the 2011 Spanish protests.[7] Adbusters' senior editor Micah White said they had suggested the protest via their email list and it "was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world.”[6] Adbusters' website said that from their "one simple demand, a presidential commission to separate money from politics," they would "start setting the agenda for a new America."[8] They promoted the protest with a poster featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull.[9][10]
The internet group Anonymous encouraged its readers to take part in the protests, calling protesters to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street."[11][12] Other groups began to join in the organization of the protest, including the U.S. Day of Rage,[13] and the NYC General Assembly, the governing body of the Occupy Wall Street group.[14] An Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook began on September 19 with a YouTube video of the early protests, and by September 22, it had reached critical mass. By mid-October, Facebook listed 125 Occupy-related pages and roughly one in every 500 hashtags used on Twitter, all around the world, was the movement's own #OWS.[15]
Adbusters' Kalle Lasn, when asked why it took three years after the implosion of Lehman Brothers' for people to begin protesting, said that after the election of President Barack Obama there was a feeling among the young that he would pass laws to regulate the banking system and "take these financial fraudsters and bring them to justice." However, as time passed, "the feeling that he's a bit of a gutless wonder slowly crept in" and they lost their hope that his election would result in change.[16]
The protest was begun at Zuccotti Park since it was private property and police could not legally force protesters to leave without being requested to do so by the property owner.[17] At a press conference held on the same day as the protests began, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg explained, "People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it."[14]
Immediate prototypes for OWS are the British student protests of 2010, Greece's and Spain's anti-austerity protests of the "indignados" (indignants), as well as the Middle Easts' Arab Spring protests. These antecedents have in common with OWS a reliance on social media and electronic messaging to circumvent the authorities, as well as the feeling that financial institutions, corporations, and the political elite have been malfeasant in their behavior toward youth and the middle class.[18][19] Occupy Wall Street, in turn, gave rise to the Occupy movement in the United States and around the world.[20][21][22]
Occupy Wall Street - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
