Preparation for Essay 3 - Occupy - Inquiry Review Draft

Dillon Waugh

Hayes

English 100 – 9:10

4/9/13

Word Count: 818

Occupy Inquiry Review Draft

The Occupy movement that began in New York and spread across America and beyond, inspiring similar socioeconomic protests in Russia and Australia among others, had passed its first anniversary as of September 2012 with question on what that year of fame and infamy was all for. While it began with clarion cries to the government to close the wealth gap and curse the rich for clinging to their money, there is general agreement that the legacy of the Occupy movement is not in any legislature that it called for. (Must verify this -  what legislature is claimed as inspired by the movement, and what was its motivation?) This leaves its remaining sympathizers to circle at the edges of its remnants as it continues to barely coast as what it was originally, burning out like an asteroid; they either look on ahead and all around at the burning fringes of its wake to analyze why its demands are not and have not been meant, or back along its wake for traces of what its legacy is, and how long they will last.

The first of the groups are generally in agreement: the Occupy movement’s insistent questions and requests were never directly answered because they were often incomprehensible; as the movement gained size, it lost its focus. (???) Barr in (source?) interviews an early Occupy official who regretted that many of the movement’s observers joined for excuse to “talk about every social ill we have”, obscuring the movement’s original core intention, and Joe Nocera of (source?) suggests, quite similarly, that the protests became masses of diluted voices, agreeing not with intensity on one issue but broadly, vaguely in a spirit of general liberality.

(???) Daubs agrees that the movement would have benefitted from ambassadors and official core messages and statements to “sell” – one point of focus for its followers and watchers to fix their eyes on. Further on, (???)  claims that the movement had “nothing new to offer” – collecting and making all the usual laments on the government and American society’s failings, not identifying a problem and demanding a solution, and grew meaningless – appeared as pointless “whining”, as often criticized.

Leif Dautch of U.S.A. Today concedes this as the fairest of criticism for the movement as well. However, by his interpretation, the Occupiers are not the ones missing the point of the movement: according to Dautch, “The unifying principle of the movement is not based on political or economic theory, but instead on a quintessentially moral theme” – the best spirit for a protest to take, as after all, “Economics is premised on the assumption that people will act solely in their best interest. Morality is one of the few remaining realms in which individuals are occasionally expected to act for another's benefit.”

The point of the Occupy movement, then, is not in voices reaching through the walls of governing offices – it is in provocation of thought in the people, the potential for inspiration. And here, it has certainly left some impression. Returning closer to home from Occupy-inspired anti-inequality movements in Canada, Russia, Australia, and Spain, among others, the protests have sparked the founding of several charities and citizen-run programs and foundations. (???) describes the Rolling Jubilee, an online fundraiser for cancellation of medical debt.

The question remains, however, of whether those marks made are ones that are meant to last. As the title of Daubs’s article asks it, “The Occupy Movement Gets People Asking Questions. But Are They The Right Ones?” If they are, will those answers stick? (Must look up and examine other Occupy-inspired organizations and programs and their successes or current state, including that of Rolling Jubilee – also effects of international movements.)

It’s also uncertain whether or not the controversies that the movement has brought into vogue are indeed proof of its effectiveness. As long as wealth is gathered and hoarded in the lofts at the topmost levels of the socioeconomic infrastructure, all people but those luckiest enough to live there will be discontented, and were before the movement started to arhythmically stomp its feet – and that the movement’s core message was a moral one, wouldn’t it have nonetheless benefitted from communication by a conducted unison of voices instead of obscurity in a once merely socialistic (another message for America to receive – “socialism” is, in and of itself, hardly the black-speech unthinkable heresy it’s treated as) turned socialistic, anarchic, etc. and often self-contradictory babble? Meanwhile, America is in a period of recession – economics and economic policy are always a topic of discussion, as is tax policy and the trouble of the wealth gap. Income tax rates may indeed be slightly more specific than will occur to the average citizen to ponder on, and the statistics dredged up and theories posed in regards to the current rates and possible effects of alternative ones are likely useful – but are their detailed examination a thing that Occupy should be credited for?