“They have no clear message.” “They have no unified and coherent message.” “They are waging class warfare.” “They are there just to find sexual partners.”
These are some of the many ways people have described the Occupy Wall Street Movement. This is the message those who do not like what the movement stands for would like us to receive so we will pay no mind and go back to our ordinary daily lives. This could not be more fallacious.
Within any protest movement, you will find mixed signals. Many people with different views and different interests join protest movements because they share a lot in common and especially have the dominant purpose or signal in common. Protest movements are co-opted for additional causes that further add noise to the overall message of the movement.
It should be clear to everyone in America, in the world, that what the Occupy Wall Street Movement wants, what the dominant signal of the movement is, is to reign in the excesses of the overgrown destabilizing financial sector, which has plunged the world into a global recession.
We hear talk of a double-dip recession, but for most of us, we never truly got out of the current recession. We’re just falling deeper into the pit of darkness, death and despair.
After the last Great Depression, the world had a deeper respect for the fundamental flaws of finance capitalism and focused on full employment and stabilization of markets. As time went on, people lost the memory of the pain and horror brought onto the world by economic disaster.
Regulations eroded away for 30 to 40 years, taxes on the wealthy beneficiaries of the financial system were lowered, de-industrialization set in and income inequality grew as those with vast sums of money and financiers accelerated the financialization of the entirety of human life.
The accusations of socialism are also ironic in light of the benefits the rich have received from the government. Bailouts stick most immediately in mind. We were told that we needed bailouts to avoid economic disaster.
Yes, those who gambled on markets and supported most of the flawed economic and financial theories of academia were experiencing their own disasters and were set up to get duly punished by the God of the free market until they forced the government to save them and “save us.” Of course, most others were not saved and many lost their jobs, lost their health insurance and lost their homes.
What we’re witnessing now with the Occupy Wall Street movement is the “blow back” of this process of unmitigated greed and blind hubris. If the economic malaise does not improve, if the situation only gets worse the numbers of this movement will swell as the conditions that gave rise to the protest will still be felt and felt by more people.