Perspectives on the movement a year later
By Jennifer Bednard
Photos by Lindsay Brown
With the anniversary of Occupy recently behind us, there has been a lot of discussion about the movement and its place in a larger context, or of the possibility of the movement continuing in the future. What is still unclear to many is the reason for the movement in the first place, and just how so many problems wound up under the banner of a single movement. The myriad of stories all have a single common factor — economic policy.
The Occupy movement often cites the fact that in the United States, one per cent of the population holds an enormous portion of the country’s wealth. A possible salve for national debt that comes out of these sentiments is, unsurprisingly, “Robin Hood tax,” which would institute higher taxes on the wealthy to the net benefit of the poor. We can see something similar in action today in France, where Francois Hollande recently declared a tax of 75 per cent on income over one billion euro. This common narrative of rich versus poor runs throughout much of the Occupy’s media coverage, and has since the beginning.
Of course, there is no real push on a government level to implement such a tax. This is because both major parties in the United States are economically conservative by any reasonable standard. It is impossible to vote for a reform of the tax and welfare systems, because there is no party to propose that. That leaves protesting as the only viable option for bringing attention to any issue that falls on the economic left. In some ways, Occupy is a movement along the same lines as the Tea Party: both attempt to pull the ruling parties back from a near-consensus on economic issues to something that may represent a wider range of opinion.
This is not the sole reason for Occupy’s existence. The movement extends to countries whose political parties have a broad spectrum of economic approaches. Occupy is based on the idea that the current economic system has left ordinary people behind, a common problem in most countries around the world. However, the United States has seen the most intense and prolonged protests of the movement, which suggests that the issues are more entrenched there than elsewhere. In a political system that ensures that only the rich are able to run for office — furthermore, only the rich supported by business donations — the poor are simply not represented. And for those who cannot vote for change and don’t have the money to fund change, taking to the streets in protest is the only viable option.
