By drawing attention to the deepening income inequality in America, protestors considered OWS a success. Web sites and social media were the perfect vehicles for the OWS message because the internet was a radically democratic form of communication; anyone could post their ideas and suggest activities to further their cause.
The use of technology — particularly social media — to organize protests and communicate goals, objectives and activities is a new form of social movement that constitutes a break from the protest movements of the past.
In fact, such differences tend to be regarded as a resource for, rather than a barrier to, doing things in common" Jensen and Bang, , p. The OWS movement provides a template for modern social protests in its use of technology to unite people in common causes despite traditional cultural differences.
The OWS movement is also an excellent example of a new form of voluntary association, distinct from the more formalized associations of the recent past. The cause itself is what binds the individuals together and gives the group its unique identity.
Since technology defies the limitations of time and place, it reaches a broader audience and allows members to participate in the cause without the obligations of formal membership. These kinds of informal, episodic networks of volunteers advocating on behalf of a cause that cut across traditional identity groups will be the future of voluntary associations in the philanthropic sector. What does it mean to join a peaceful protest? This paper was developed by students taking a Philanthropic Studies course taught at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University in Occupy Wall Street.
Grade Level:. Looming over anything protesters did, now, is the enormity of the crackdown that followed. In , before they were war-zones, Yemen, Libya, and Syria had nonviolent protests against intransigent regimes. The regimes struck back brutally.
These nightmares began with outbreaks of hope. That hope was intolerable. Millions of people have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed, as a result. In Europe, protesters did what many U. Protest-aligned parties took national power in Greece and Spain. But the central European banks clung harder to austerity policies that put housing and decent work out of reach for a generation of young people. When the politics of providing for people who had been deprived became untenable, right-wing movements arose to blame the symptoms of austerity policies on refugees arriving from the Syrian crackdown.
In the United States, well, we eventually got President Trump, the inconvenienced owner of the building at 40 Wall Street. I recall the drugstore on its bottom floor being a popular escape route from police. Protesters everywhere tried out radical forms of self-governance in their camps, inspired by the texture of online networks. Rather than making demands of politicians, they debated how to make politicians obsolete.
Whatever ideology any individual held, together they were anarchists, in the sense of trying to root out hierarchy wherever it appeared. When celebrities visited Occupy Wall Street to offer support, debates broke out about whether they should be allowed to speak or have any special treatment. There was a time when the open-source website for the Occupy Wall Street assembly was a beautiful machine, publishing up-to-the-minute news and discussion and proposals — a glimpse of politics moving with the speed and interactivity of the internet.
By framing the populist economic message that thrust anti-corporate lawmakers such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez into the electoral spotlight, Occupy Wall Street arguably did more in six months to move American politics to the left than the Democratic Party was able to do in six decades.
Which raises the question: Could Sanders and his political revolution have been possible before Occupy shattered decades of silence about income inequality?
Not likely. Although the transition never happened, Occupy achieved something perhaps even greater. Operating independently of the Sanders campaign, the group created a horizontal model for voter engagement by inviting volunteers across all regions and demographics to help the Sanders phenomenon spread in the distributed, decentralized format of a social movement. We gave away the keys.
Photos: Occupy Wall Street spreads worldwide. When I interviewed Evan Weber for my book about Occupy and its legacy, he agreed that the movement played an essential role in igniting a new progressive era—one that might finally be on the verge of achieving transformational social, economic, and electoral reforms. Occupy was like a great wave hitting shore—and a warning of even bigger waves to come. Inequality and the wealth gap are now core tenets of the Democratic platform, providing a frame for other measurable gains spurred by Occupy.
The camps may be gone and Occupy may no longer be visible on the streets, but the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is still there, and growing.
What appeared to be a passing phenomenon of protest now looks like the future of U. In , numerous cities and states including four Republican-dominated ones—Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota—voted for higher pay; will see more showdowns in New York City and Washington, D. The grassroots movement composed of fast-food workers and Walmart employees, convenience-store clerks, and adjunct teachers seized on the energy of Occupy to spark a rebirth of the U.
This renaissance was most recently visible on April 15, when tens of thousands of workers marched in hundreds of cities to demand better pay and conditions. We have an entire world to win. Occupy also reshaped the U.
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