Essay on Occupy Wall Street: An Inefficient Protest

Occupy Wall Street has been called many things including: unfocused, ungrounded, and silly. Others coin it as “America’s first internet-era movement” (Rushkoff). In quintessence, Occupy Wall Street is a series of protests and demonstrations that oppose the influence that corporate greed has on American Democracy. The protestors manipulate marches and nonviolent demonstrations to express their dissatisfaction with the state of American Politics and economy. This relates to the political science concepts of power, performance democracy, and protective democracy.

On September 17, 2011 hundreds of people began to gather in Zuccotti Park, New York which is Wall Street’s financial district under the banner “Occupy Wall Street”: these three simple words are causing an uproar in America (Engler). Additionally, these three words happen to be protesting the current status of America’s financial condition. With the economy in America being as terrible as it is, and the unemployment rate skyrocketing, it is absolutely necessary for some sort of change to occur. The Occupy Wall Street protesting is most positively a progressive step for the economic state in America and it is a step in the right direction.

Protests are a way that many citizens have historically exercised their right to freedom of speech and as to voice their opinions on current matters in the U.S. as well as other nations. Protests help the uninformed get informed on specific issues, and try to persuade fellow citizens. What were some of the effective aspects of the protests that were portrayed in “The Matrix”, “Battle in Seattle” as well as those in “The Letter from Birmingham Jail”? What were the downfalls? An effective protest is one where an advocated idea gets across to the intended audience. Peaceful protests tend to have a better outcome than those that lead to violence.

Peaceful protest leads to both positive and negative impacts on a free society. The main issue of the society isn't just people making bold moves like these, it has to do with people being able to accept them and not deal with it in a violent way, thinking that, that is acceptable and going to solve anything, when it really make it

As the protests grow they destroy and vandalize many small businesses and the protesters do not care who they hurt and when they destroy the business they are destroying people's livelihood and costing the them money that they may not have and when they get it fixed they are in debt and they don't care just as long as if they can get in they will steal the thing in the shop and get away wit it because there are too many people to stop the bad ones but even if they do they all will yell police brutality and that it is racist because they are black and many other reasons to do it and riot

To begin with, peaceful and violent protests can spark the change, or get the attention of more supporters until something is resolved for the equality. The article, “Making a Visual Argument:Inequality and the Occupy Movement” shows one of the most influential movement, the occupy movement. Occupy Miami showed a man with a dollar taped to his mouth reading “occupy.” Then, during the occupy Portland demonstration a young college girl Elizabeth Nichols is pepper sprayed at point blank. These acts caught the eyes of the American people, and rose in popularity. The occupy movement also showed American’s that there is a problem of economic equality through the occupy at Miami and Portland

These people protest on Wall Street in New York on an everyday basis. They sleep there, eat there and basically do whatever they want. This protest does not have a unified cause, but the general conclusion that can be drawn from everyone is

Nonviolent movements are widespread across America, but very little are effective enough to create monumental change or to have a lasting impact. In their article "Waging Nonviolence: What makes nonviolent movements explode", Mark and Paul Engler explore what makes nonviolent protests powerful enough to force change. Written in December 2014, the article uses modern and historic examples of protest movements, with the main focus on the Occupy Wall Street movement, to create the context as to what each of the methods discussed has accomplished. Using the main example of Occupy Wall Street, the article showcases two major points, disruption and sacrifice, that nonviolent protest movements utilize in order to have the greatest effect, as well as how those two points work together to create lasting impacts. Disruption relies on interrupting everyday life and preventing business from occurring, while sacrifice focuses on what people are willing to risk and give up in order to see the change they wish for. In their article, the Engler’s propose that while these two methods of protest can be effective, protests rarely become large enough to actually create any change, even if they are combined, simply because the major businesses, corporations, and organizations that are being protested hold incredible amounts of political power and therefore are able to very easily shut down protests with police forces. This argument, that protests are inevitably going to fail, is very realistic

The activists feel like this disruptive protest is needed in order to disturb not only the public but to disturb politicians and people in high places. They feel like in this way they will grab the attention, sympathy, and support of citizens and will force politicians to face these issues and propose solutions to them like police reform and will also remind the police force and all other authorities that they are aware of these injustices and that they are never ignored (Mather).

Occupy Wall Street’s opposing expression of the disparity between the wealthy and the poor may have begun in good faith by utilizing the Freedom of Speech and General Assembly amendment rights, but the strategies some of the protestors have demonstrated are resulting in adverse reactions against themselves. The Occupy Wall Street movement will assuredly cost affected cities in the double digits of millions of dollars. Increases in payroll, overtime, and business expenses will inadvertently backfire and increase layoffs. The burden the protestors physically place on a city is weighing down an already financially stressed situation. The mass of people and their tent lifestyle is causing a drain on city finances, and alas, the money is coming

Since the beginning of the 1900’s the world has seen more and more social movements being led by young people, who protest against the worlds inequalities. These movements range from the civil rights movement, to the hippie movement in the late 60’s to more “modern” movements. One of those movements is the Occupy Wall Street movement or OWS for short. From October 2011 onward, OWS was not only the largest protest movement in North America but also sparked worldwide protest that either used the Occupy name or embodied the OWS ideology in some way. This essay will first talk about the origin of OWS, its ideology, goals and controversies surrounding protest and police involvement. It will then move on to talk about the ripple

Hey kyle great question i think many Americans feel that to be heard you have to do some type of protest.Because protests do draw lots of media coverage, research shows, because of journalists’ appetite for anything novel or unusual.But several new studies on the psychology behind protests show that, perversely, “extreme” protests like that at Berkeley also undermine activists’ overarching goal of attracting more people to their movement. What’s worse, activists don’t realize they are hoisting themselves with their own smoke bombs.A prototypical extreme protest is something where vandalism occurs or violence is threatened, or protesters behave in a violent way, or an interstate highway gets shut down.The problem is, the extreme protesters didn’t

Current generations can try and prevent another economic meltdown by starting grassroots organizations like the Occupy movement. The Occupy movements slogan is "We are the 99%" this is referring to the fact that 1% of the population in the United States holds more wealth that the other 99%. Some of the ideas about preventing another economic crisis have come from Kalle Lasn of Adbusters whose magazine published their thoughts on the matter which included restricting banking-industry regulations, banning high frequency trading, arrest and prosecuting the executives responsible for the economic breakdown in 2008, as well as creating a commission to investigate financial impropriety within the White House. In an article from Bloomsberg Business

Before the new digital/technology age, protests were generally started in someone’s house or garage to meet up and discuss what they wanted to do. The process took much longer to gain energy and get people hyped up. Social media played a vital role in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Different kinds of videos of police and protesters clashing inflamed all kinds of passions for the protesters and their cause, enraging the general public, and generally raising awareness of the movement. Smartphones that allow video recording permitted for instantaneous reactions.

Are protests an effective way to create change? An Argumentative Essay by Yee Tay Protesting is publicly demonstrating strong objection to a policy or course of action adopted by those in authority. Some people may think that protesting isn’t an effective way to change things. However, as a person who lives in a protesting nation, and has seen how effective some of these protests are, I believe protests are an effective way to create change.