You may or may not have heard about Occupy Wall Street, the protest that started September 17 to rail against unemployment, inequality, and whatever other grievance college-age discontents can get their hands on. It’s a testament to the idealism of the protestors that they dredge up fifty year-old strategies in the hopes of changing the world, but it’s also a testament to the cynicism and apathy of everyone else that they’ve been met with a fair amount of reflexive derision.
The week-old protest is hitting a little bit of a boiling point, with 80 police arrests Saturday (and a reprehensible mace attack near Union Square that was caught on video) highlighting the intensity of the situation. As it stood when I was down there several days ago, it didn’t seem like there was a single idea to rally around—there were several vying for control, hashed out in amateurish yet earnest debate. And yet that’s something of the essence of direct democracy—idealistic, maybe a little silly, but in it for good. We’re all newbies at this anyway.
But maybe it’s time, after all of this. Sometimes protests are dumb exercises in empty discourse, but there is a real grievance behind Occupy Wall Street. At the heart of it, the protest is in opposition to the major unemployment crisis at hand, in conjunction with the bizarre transfer of wealth that’s occurred under everyone’s noses in the last decade or so, exacerbated by the debt that’s probably the most real part of the equation for you. It’s a real problem, no matter how opposed to radicalism you may be.
And it might not be getting better, either. NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini, famous for predicting the 2008 housing crisis and subsequence recession, believes that the United States will enter a period of “unrest” brought on by a falling economy. This continuing protest may be the beginning of something related to that. It could just as easily be as its detractors frame it—underburdened youth shouting “Down with…stuff!” Whether Occupy Wall Street possesses importance or not is beside the point, however. More vital is whether—and why—we actually care.
We go to NYU, a school famous for its lack of community. We live in New York, a city famed for its self-centered acquisitionism. As NYU students, we are caricatured as being disenfranchised, yet also apathetic and completely bored by any kind of effort, no matter how legitimate, to change things on a big-picture level. For the longest time, that was totally true. But now, Occupy Wall Street is spilling over into University Place, and one has to wonder whether our hardened sense of DGAF holds. Are NYU students as apathetic as ever, or is that just conventional wisdom?
Kudos to you and to the protestors for their intentions. I heard about this yesterday from a friend and will be going down in a day or so to see for myself and perhaps join ranks. I cannot agree more with your sentiment here – I perused the New York Times coverage on the protests and observed just the derision you are talking about here. Personally, I support anyone who takes the initiative to take a stand on the rampant injustices we are facing in our society today. And I think that cynicism is the cause as well as the outcome of the problem. I’d rather put my hat in with people who may be overidealistic than cynical.
There is also some kind of “Occupy Boston” protest happening, with similar sentiments. They are occupying the financial area of Boston in the same way that is being done here – No coverage on any of these movements in the mainstream media is certainly upsetting. Happy to at least see the several stories on nyulocal about it.
“Does anyone care” – I know its difficult to care when you have sooooo many things on MTV to watch as the country falls to pieces, but yes, some do care, and a lot more should.
Go to Facebook. Use the search engine window (at top of page) and type in Occupy. Keep hitting “see more results” until you see the Occupy action near you (there are hundreds!) Jon and help organize the action there and sustain it.
Ari, that’s a great question. But it would have been better if you could have asked yourself that, figured out why you felt that way, and then wrote about that instead. Even better, compare your opinions to the ones of the protesters down there by going and talking to them, or pouring over some of the media coverage (what little there is, try http://www.democracynow.org/tags/financial_meltdown). I appreciate that you’re trying to goad your fellow students into having little more than passing apathy about it, but by nature of your being an NYU student, you some privilege to acknowledge before you can be a totally objective bystander.
Police response to Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders & protesters.
Martin Luther King is a prime “object of interest” by the FBI J. Edger Hoover
Police response to the 1968 Republican Convention protesters in Chicago
Police response to Gay Liberation protest NYC: Stonwall
Police response to Transportation Alternative bike rallys, NYC
Police response to Wall St. protesters & its easy justification
What say you Mr Mayor & Police Commissioner Kelly? The freedom to peaceably assemble, the freedom to speak, to protest is guaranteed in the 1st Article of our Constitution. Article 4 establishes the right of people to be secure in their person against unreasonable seizure (provocation by police inducing self defense defined as “illegal” qualifies as such); Article 8 forbids excessive, cruel punishment (pepper
spray used “judicially” & instead of harsher punishments, e.g. a bone crushing baton is justified).
There are uncomfortable parallels in our ecconomic debacle & the co-opting of democratic Government by financial interests & a judicial system biased toward the wealthy & powerful with the conditions which led to the moral collapse of 1920-1930s Germany & thus enabled & supported the rise of the NAZI horror.
For those who would dismiss this comparison I would suggest a close reading of the history of “Nazi Germany” by Klaus P. Fischer & “The Third Reich” by Michael Burlington.
Your media organization at NYU have the excellent opportunity, being knee deep behind the lines, relatively close to Wall Street, to interview both average Joe protestors, Kall Lasn (check spelling on his name/he’s the co-ounder of Adbusters.org) as well as area Wall Street execs. Even if the suits walk away from your camera or flip phone, get it on video. No one has those clips. Call the Mayor, get him on camera, or whomever is the local council person affiliated with the area, what is his/her take on the situation.
The mainstream media is 98 percent dropping the ball on adequate coverage for a near two week old protest, which by the sounds of it, is only going to get bigger in the coming days and weeks…so the question is…WHY? Ask that question to everyone. Why isn’t CNN covering it as front page news? I’m sure there are dozens of front section reports on issues concerning the Middle East. Twenty year old, peaceful girls are getting pepper sprayed on University, for standing on the sidewalk, not making much of a fuss. People – college students, army vets, 9/11 first responders, working people too – are sleeping out, for weeks, on sidewalks near Wall Street. Why? From one of the video interviews someone did of an arrested protester:
“The main thing we’re looking for is that we’re human beings. And human beings should come before money and profit. There’s a lot of greed out here. A lot of people don’t have things. There are a few small peole who do have it and they’re keeping it from us. They got the cops out here to protect them, and they should be protecting us. That’s why we’re out here, because thhere is injustice going on. Everyone wants to know: whats our cause? What’s our cause? Listen this is not just a protest. This is a struggle, it’s a fight. It’s a war going on, and we’re fighting a peaceful war.–Christina Gonzalez, Protestor (arrested)
Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, hundreds of thousands of people around the country have been protesting against primarily the same thing: the undeniable eradication of the middle class.The apathy you admit NYU students maintaining will, or could, be lowered upon introducing the people risking harm, arrest and damaging their criminal record, to the NYU community through your lens. That is powerful. Why would they do that? Place themselves in harms way? They aren’t gaining money down there. Just thoughts, keep on it. If you guys get good stuff, it will go viral to the starved independent media located elsewhere, as well as foreign press, because you have access that nearly all media outlets in the world do not have.
To close, rather than questioning and questioning, my two cents is this:
do several, several interviews, boths ides of the fence, start with the protestors, ask them who you guys should interview. Follow it where the story leads. The girls maced would be a good start. Are they suing? Is there an NYU chapter of Occupy Wall Street? Wasn’t Kimmel Occupied by Take back NYU??? Is that group down at Wall Street? There must be dozens of NYU students down there. Follow a couple of them, tell their story, what other students think about them going down. How do the faculty at NYU (Poli Sci, Journalism) feel about the protest?
Right now the country’s economy is falling apart, there is complete stagnation in Washington, and where do the protesters decide to go to? Wall Street? Sure Wall Street was responsible for the recession but the economy’s problems extend far beyond what Wall Street did and the fact that the protesters don’t realize this makes them ignorant. Stop wasting time and do something productive. Having the NYPD waste resources on a pointless protest is creating negative value because quite frankly nobody cares and nothing will get done as a result of the protest. Let’s get back to work people.
@Raphael A. : How do you propose we “get back to work”. What is “something” in do “something” productive? Isn’t that what these protesters are doing?
Where are those seniors and retiree’s account holders who lost billions of dollars to the wall investment firm crooks. Everyone who lost money in their retiree accounts and 401k’s should be out there screaming, ” where is my money” we want our money back”
Here is a video created by my crew and myself -all NYU students for our documentary class. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MvqgdaLwcI Voices are being heard and discussions are happening all the time, both in and out of the classrooms.
@frank kelly: Surely you cannot be serious. Any person who invests in an equity account knows that there is a chance that the value of their funds will go down. It is just that simple. If a sports team pays an athlete millions of dollars and that athlete proceeds to get injured, or in any way not live up to his or her contract, it means that the team made a bad investment and will loose a substantial amount of money. How ridiculous would it be if the owner or GM sat outside the player’s house screaming, “where is our money!”? Just because you do not like the outcome does not mean that anyone has wronged you or that you are entitled to a ‘do over’. Grow up.