Capitalism – many say it’s what allows our country to thrive. Others place society’s problems on capitalism and blame it on the corporate world. The Occupy Wall Street is a group of activist who are against corporate greed, social inequality and any other divisions between the rich and poor. The group first began on September 17, 2011 in New York’s financial district. They describe themselves a diverse resistance movement with no leader.
Though these protests first began in New York, similar demonstrations have taken place across the U.S including Los angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. This motion has even spread to Canada, planned to take place on October 15th 2011 in Vancouver at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Occupy Vancouver |www.globaltvbc.com
The members of this group believe that they are the majority and the banks and corporate industry make up the other small percent.
“1 percent of the people have 99 percent of the money.”- A member of the Occupy Wall Street
The protesters had hoped to reach the magnitude of other protests this year such as in Egypt and Israel. Some compare the the protests to protests during the Vietnam War.
It may quite possibly be because I am a business student, I find that the protesters are quite irrational and unrealistic. In an during the CTV 11 o’clock news on October 8, 2011, Farshad Azadain, an organizer, claimed at 4:50 that the organization wanted things such as “free post-secondary education”. In theory, this would be ideal, but what they do not realize is that the money to this would come from higher taxes – something that they had hoped to get rid of. I find these protests preposterous, with little evidence or concrete goals that they would like to achieve.
Works Cited
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wall_street/index.html?inline=nyt-org