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Occupy Vancouver: What is it good for?
20 Nov 2011 by Justin Choi in Featured Stories, Local News / 2 Comments
What is the Occupy Wall Street movement about?
Everyone seems to have an answer to this question. Here’s a multiple choice:
1) It’s an anti-capitalist movement for greater socialism.
2) It’s a bunch of hippies and unemployables OD’ing, doing yoga, and being a general nuisance. Get a job, losers.
3) It’s a fight against corporate power in government and in our lives. This is a fundamental effrontery to democracy and a just society.
4) It’s the latest in the hipster movement. The homeless are often mistaken with hipsters working the hobo-chic look.
5) Lolol retards don’t know how to write a proper list of demands (this one can be cut if too not PC)
Here’s my answer. It’s all of the above (yes, I cheated. Come at me bro).
Yes, there are addicts there, as well as hobos (who are somehow bad for wanting free food), Marxists, anarchists, and, god forbid, plenty of yoga-lovers. However, there are just as many ordinary citizens, students, people with jobs, and generally people from all walks of life. People are protesting for less corporate influence in government, less military spending and more social services, legalization of marijuana, more environmental protection, and free love.
At this point, you are probably thinking: they can’t even agree on what to protest, how are they going to achieve anything? You might even be reminded of the “list of demands” which turned out not to be the official statement after all.
However, this diversity is the crux of the Occupy movement. It’s a movement against what our society has become: a soulless money-making machine. To quote an editorial from the Rolling Stone magazine:
You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it’s 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.
In the end, money is power in our system of government — things like lobbying, campaign contributions, litigation, and connections don’t come free. Corporations have lots of money, and they know how to use it. Although the Occupy movement does have its share of fringe opinions and incidents, the key message is its discontent with the distribution of power in our society. Even hippies and the homeless get to have a say in that.
About the Author: Justin Choi
2 Comments
Marc Hewitt
In our system at the federal level we’ve at least made a start. Since 2006 campaign contributions have been capped at $1100 per person
21 Nov 2011 07:11 am
negrosaurus
such eloquence, such beauty this writeup xzibits that i must roll on the floor just to remind myself that this is real life.
21 Nov 2011 07:11 am
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