Declaration of the Occupation of New York City (2011) - American civilisation: from the 1990's to present Occupy Declaration

Extract

[...] Thus, according to The Atlantic newspaper, "Occupy's chief accomplishment was changing the national conversation by giving Americans a new language-the 99 percent and the 1 percent-to frame the dual crises of income inequality and the corrupting influence of money in politics2". With some perspective, we saw that the Occupy Wall Street movement did not completely disappeared after 2011; its principles and grievances fueled many other causes in the following months and years, and income inequality issues are still very topical nowadays. [...]

[...] This text acts as a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street protest group. It details their grievances, but says little about their claims. Indeed, this Declaration lists more than twenty "facts" (according to their words) that they collectively denounce - for example inequalities and discrimination at work, students' precarity because of student loans, the outsourcing of labor, the lack of freedom of the press, the fact that corporation give money to politicians, etc. At the end of this list, an asterisk specifies that "These grievances are not all-inclusive", implying that they are mere examples of what people are really denouncing. [...]

[...] It began on September with more than 1000 people protesting around Wall Street, following two Canadian anti-consumerist activists' call. Indeed, in their publication Adbusters, they had proposed to peacefully occupy Wall Street to protest against corruption and increasing wealth inequalities. This call had been followed by several other groups with similar concerns. During the following weeks, hundreds of demonstrators lived and slept in Zuccotti Park in New York. From October the movement spread to the rest of the United States and similar protests were held in more than seventy big cities. [...]

[...] On November the demonstrators living in Zuccotti Park were evicted by New York police, marking the beginning of the movement's scattering. Occupy Wall Street's main slogan was "We are the referring to the income and wealth inequalities observed in the United States, between the wealthiest of the population and the other people. People from Occupy Wall Street were also protesting against the high rate of unemployment in the United States, among many other subjects (student debts, mortgages, etc.). They wanted to achieve several main goals: reducing the influence and power of corporations on politics, achieving a more equal distribution of income, creating more jobs, helping indebted students, etc. [...]

[...] Declaration of the Occupation of New York City (2011) - American civilisation: from the 1990's to present Occupy Declaration Declaration of the Occupation of New York City Accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011 The text that we are going to analyze is the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, a text that became the official manifesto of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. Indeed, between September and December 2011, many cities throughout the world saw protests and demonstrations rise, mainly to denounce the inequalities driven by capitalism. [...]