Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a movement whose activism is planned and coordinated via a free, open-source social-networking website that is maintained by an independent group of organizers who describe themselves as “committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements.” Strongly anti-capitalist, OWS characterizes America as a “ruthless,” materialistic society where the chief objective is to “always minimize costs and maximize profits”; where “lives are commodities to be bought and sold on the open market”; and where “the economic transaction has become the dominant way of relating to the culture and artifacts of human civilization.” The “deep spiritual sickness” that necessarily results from this repugnant philosophy of perpetual economic "growth for the sake of growth," says OWS, has caused “vast deprivation, oppression and despoliation ... to cover the world.” OWS's prescribed remedy is to replace the foregoing arrangement “with a society of cooperation and community” – i.e., a socialist economy.
In October 2011, dozens of University of Pennsylvania professors signed a pro-OWS petition which gave further insight into Occupy Wall Street's worldviews and objectives. Most notably, the signatories lauded the movement for "express[ing] widespread anger with the economic and political disenfranchisement of the great majority of the American people"; derided "a system that provides increasingly few opportunities for the majority –– the 99% –– while generating vast profits for a tiny minority"; demanded "an end to the extreme inequalities that structure our society"; complained about inadequate government funding for "our social safety networks, ... infrastructures, social and education programs, and workers’ wages, rights, and benefits." Ultimately, the professors "celebrate[d] the creative and intellectual work of Occupy Wall Street as an essential partner to our own efforts to facilitate the emergence of a better social order."
OWS organizers advocate the imposition of a "Robin Hood Tax" (i.e., taking from the "rich" and giving to the "poor") on most goods and services worldwide, with the aim of using its generated revenues to fund social-welfare programs. Such a tax was originally the brainchild of non-governmental organizations based mostly in the United Kingdom. A prominent supporter of the Robin Hood Tax is the economist Jeffrey Sachs, a key member of the George Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Additional OWS demands include the following: a “guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment”; a $20-per-hour minimum wage; an end to “the fossil fuel economy”; “open borders” so “anyone can travel anywhere to work and live”; $1 trillion in public expenditures for infrastructure; another $1 trillion for “ecological restoration”; “free college education” for all; the forgiveness of “all debt on the entire planet, period”; and the abolition of credit agencies.
Describing itself as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions," OWS says: "The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants."
OWS was a key organizer of the September 17, 2011 “Day of Rage” protest targeting Wall Street, the hub of New York City's financial district. According to the group, the purpose of that event was to express “opposition to the principle that has come to dominate not only our economic lives but our entire lives: profit over and above all else.” Other noteworthy organizers of the September 17 rally, which drew approximately 1,000 participants, included USDayOfRage, NYC General Assembly, Take The Square, Anonymous, and the AdBusters Media Foundation. Indeed, Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn was the major player in getting OWS established and launched.
Another central figure in OWS from its inception was Lisa Fithian, an anarchist describing herself as a career “community organizer” who specializes in “direct action” protests, and who has close ties to labor unions.
According to journalist Aaron Klein, the September 17 protests apparently represented “the culmination” of a campaign by Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN and president of an SEIU local in New Orleans, who in March 2011 had issued a call for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase” -- part of his so-called "anti-banking jihad." Rathke's efforts were supported by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member and radical-left organizer who candidly aims to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement”; “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption; “bring down [the] bonuses” of executives in the financial sector; and “interfere with their ability to ... be rich.”
Occupy Wall Street pledged that during the weeks and months after September 17, 2011, its members would continue to “launch daily smart mob forays all over Lower Manhattan … peaceful, creative happenings in front of [such places as] Goldman Sachs, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, [and] the New York Stock Exchange.” “With a bit of luck, and if fate is on our side,” OWS said, “we may be able to turn all of lower Manhattan into a site of passionate democratic contestation – an American Tahrir Square.” (This was a reference to the major public town square in Cairo which had served as a focal point for the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.)
On October 1, 2011, a horde of the Wall Street demonstrators shut down traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for two-and-a-half hours, a move that resulted in some 700 arrests.
Also on October 1, OWS retained the Alliance For Global Justice to manage the processing of online donations to the movement.
On October 2, New York magazine published the results of a poll it had conducted with 100 committed, long-term OWS protesters in New York City. Of those who rendered opinions on the particular questions they were asked, 45 percent said that capitalism "can’t be saved" and is "inherently immoral"; 35 percent said the U.S. government is "no better than, say, Al Qaeda."
Another October 2011 survey of 200 OWS protesters found that most of the respondents shared a deep commitment to left-wing policies such as the radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionism designed to prevent American jobs from going overseas. Moreover, they generally held free-market capitalism in contempt. Of the 200 respondents, 65 percent said that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—regardless of the cost; 77 percent supported tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans; 52 percent had participated in political movements before; 98 percent endorsed civil disobedience to achieve their goals; and 31 percent would support violence to promote their agendas. For additional details on the results of this survey, click here.
Conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart depicts the OWS protesters as "the same types of groups [as] the anti-WTO crowd that in 1999 attacked Seattle"; "the same group of people that created 'Camp Casey' at President Bush's compound ... in Crawford, Texas"; and members of "the anti-war movement" who have "now been co-opted as a means to divert attention away from the Tea Party and on to an organization that shifts [onto the banks] the blame from the government for giving ... out-of-control loans to their political cronies." "It is a sleight of hand for the benefit of the Democratic Party and for the benefit of President Obama," Breitbart elaborates, "to change the onus away from the government policies that created our failed economic system."
Breitbart further points out that OWS has directed its condemnations with particular passion at Bank of America because the latter's name is composed of "two negative words in the socialist dictionary, and that is 'Bank' and 'America.' And [its logo is] red, white, and blue. So they're trying to demonize Bank of America as a symbol of greed in this country."
By October 6, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement had spread to 147 cities in the U.S. and 28 cities overseas and began calling itself "Occupy Together." Among the American cities where OWS protesters had established a foothold were Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, Lexington, Tallahassee, Tampa, Gainesville, Washington DC, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Atlanta, Huntsville, Birmingham, Jersey City, Trenton, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, St. Louis, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Wichita, New Orleans, Cleveland, Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Hartford, Madison, Colorado Springs, Tulsa, Chattanooga, Boise, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Nashville, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Portland (Oregon).
Front groups of the community organization ACORN played a major role in organizing the OWS protests nationwide. For instance, the Working Families Party (WFP), a longtime ACORN front, helped mobilize the demonstrations in New York City. "[We are] actually trying to change the capitalist system that we have today because it’s not working for any of us," WFP organizer Nelini Stamp told Laura Flanders of Free Speech TV in an interview.
Meanwhile, ACORN’s newer front groups were likewise deeply involved in launching and expanding the OWS movement throughout the fall of 2011. For instance, New York Communities for Change -- led by longtime ACORN lobbyist Jon Kest -- helped WFP organize the demonstrations in lower Manhattan. In Pennsylvania, Action United participated in the "Occupy Pittsburgh" rallies. In Florida, Organize Now took part in "Occupy Orlando." The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment led the "Occupy L.A." protests. And New England United for Justice, headed by former ACORN national president Maude Hurd, participated in the related “Take Back Boston” rallies in Massachusetts.
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was also heavily involved in OWS's formation and early growth. At the heart of "Occupy Los Angeles," for instance, were two Southern California communists -- veteran Party leader Arturo Cambron and his comrade Mario Brito. In early October 2011, Brito declared that OWS's chief objective was to achieve “economic justice,” and added: “This is an international movement ... The vast majority of Americans actually believe income inequality is a major problem. The only reason they haven’t acted upon it is because there hasn’t been a mass movement.” In an October 15, 2011 address to the nearly 3,000 attendees at an "Occupy Chicago" rally, John Bachtell, a spokesman from the CPUSA's national board, claimed to “bring greetings and solidarity from the Communist Party”; he received a number of loud ovations from the crowd.
The early OWS demonstrations imposed considerable monetary costs on the cities in which they were staged. By mid-October 2011, for example, the protesters' then-month-long siege of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan had already cost New York taxpayers some $3.2 million for overtime police pay. Meanwhile, Boston City Council president Stephen Murphy reported that the costs resulting from the protests in his city were approaching $2 million.
Quite popular at OWS demonstrations across the United States are T-shirts and speeches glorifying such renowned Marxists as Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata and Mao Zedong; lionizing convicted cop-killer Troy Davis and WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning; promoting the DREAM Act and 9/11 Trutherism; and denouncing Fox News, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker, the Koch family, the New York Police Department, and "Nazi Bankers" and Jews.
Indeed, anti-Semitism is clearly in evidence at many “Occupy” events nationwide, where placards and chanted slogans denouncing the alleged conspiracies of “Jewish bankers” (and "Zionist Jews") square neatly with OWS's relentless condemnations of “greedy Wall Street bankers” and thus go unchallenged by the protesting throngs. According to the American Nazi Party, which supports OWS, the movement strikes a welcome blow against an obscenely corrupt "Judeo-Capitalism."
A deep contempt for traditional American values is also on display at many OWS events. At one "Occupy Portland" rally in October 2011, for instance, a music band performed a song whose dominant refrain was: "F*** the USA." One leading OWS organizer, a middle-aged New Yorker named John McGloin, says that people who are not "socialist[s] or ... anarchist[s]" are "under represented at OWS..." The infamous cop-killer, Marxist, and OWS supporter Mumia Abu Jamal said in October 2011: “The central focus of their [OWS] protest is capitalism: greed writ large.”
A key source of financial support for OWS is the online funding website Kickstarter, where, as of mid-October 2011, more than $75,000 had been pledged. Including also donations made by visitors to New York's Zuccotti Park, the central hub of the movement, OWS had raised some $300,000 in total. (One of the more prominent donors was filmmaker Michael Moore, who gave $1,000 to the cause.)
OWS keeps its money partly in an account at Amalgamated Bank, which bills itself as "the only 100 percent union-owned bank in the United States," and partly in the People's Federal Credit Union. In addition, OWS stores donated goods (e.g., blankets, sleeping bags, cans of food, and medical and hygienic supplies) in a cavernous space donated by the United Federation of Teachers, which has offices in a building near Zuccotti Park.
On October 14, 2011, the website BigGovernment.com reported that it had succeeded in acquiring a vast email archive (more than 3,900 emails) containing "messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the 'Occupy Wall Street' and broader 'Occupy' campaign this fall." These emails document what BigGov describes as the extensive "involvement of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals" in the OWS movement, along with the "heavy union involvement from the beginning of the 'Occupy' movement, as well as discussion about the role of the Democratic Party, and how the movement should respond to President Barack Obama." Further, the emails show that OWS's objectives are to promote extreme levels of economic and governmental destabilization; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to form alliances with other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement.
A number of the OWS emails give evidence of a “Trojan Horse” strategy designed to deceive the public about the Occupy movement's real agendas. As OWS organizer John McGloin put it:
"[F]irst you get large numbers of people to join by showing how reasonable you are. Then when the numbers are big enough, they will feel their oats, get impatient, and start demanding more than you could have imagined. (Never underestimate mob mentality.) But if you talk about overthrowing governments, capitalism or wholesale changes, most of the 99% will be scared off, and we’ll never have the power we need to affect real change. In order to fight the global corporations I estimate we need a minimum of 15 million Americans on the street. There are not 15 million radical socialist/anarchists in the US. We need people without political agendas, but with anger at corporations."
On October 15, 2011, OWS rallies were held in more than 900 cities around the world, with violence breaking out most notably in Rome, where tens of thousands of demonstrators converged. According to a Reuters report: "Hundreds of hooded, masked demonstrators rampaged in some of the worst violence seen in the Italian capital in years, setting cars ablaze, breaking bank and shop windows and destroying traffic lights and signposts." Meanwhile, 175 protesters were arrested in Chicago and 92 were arrested in New York.
Intimating that violence might become more widespread as the OWS movement continued to gain momentum, a featured speaker at an October 2011 "Occupy L.A." rally praised the French Revolution for having "made fundamental transformation," even though "it was bloody." "[U]ltimately," he elaborated, "the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by [the] working class. Long live revolution! Long live socialism!" The crowd of protesters cheered him.
In October 2011, OWS organizers invited support from U.S.-based Muslim groups. The first to accept this invitation was the Council on Islamic-American Relations.
For a list of key individuals, organizations, and governmental entities that have expressed their support for OWS and its agendas, click here.
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