Occupy Wall Street as a New Form of Protest Movement

Introduction: Democracy in the Streets

"We are what democracy looks like!" — that is a major theme represented through the Occupy Wall Street movement (Benjamin 1). Essentially, the movement is a new adaptation of older nonviolent protest styles. It encompasses elements of older traditions, such as nonviolent sit-ins and marches; however, it proves much different from more traditional protests based on its inclusion of the middle class and its diverse movement objectives that are not easily packaged into a neat media story, but are instead being translated through individual user media outlets. The movement is meant to encourage a new way of thinking about democracy and how we should live our lives in an era that is trying to deny us that very right.

Occupy Wall Street has been taking action on the streets of New York since September 2011. As a movement, it has grown significantly since its earliest days and has since spurred similar movements in cities all over the country. Those involved are standing up against what they believe is a corrupt financial system that continually rewards the rich for their greed and punishes the middle class and the poor. In the decade of the recession, economic crisis has led a majority of Americans to disdain the financial institutions and elitist capitalists that entrenched the country in recession in the first place. Today's capitalism serves only an elite few, and "the liberal state is structurally constrained to represent the economic and political interests of the capitalist class" (Jenkins & Brents 906). After the onslaught of the housing crisis and the clear exploitation of the American people in favor of profit, the Occupy Wall Street movement is demanding acknowledgment and exposure of the one percent that has exploited the middle class for so long. Within the movement itself, there is "the unifying conviction that money has undone the social compact" (Benjamin 1). Thus, the movement represents the 99% of Americans who have had enough of being exploited by the very financial institutions their tax dollars helped bail out time and time again.

Nonviolent Tactics and Their Roots

The Occupy Wall Street movement relies on the strategy of protests, marches, and nonviolent sit-ins. The most iconic image of the protesters comes from pictures of encampments in the financial districts of cities around the nation. By using nonviolent sit-ins and marches, the movement embodies elements of traditional nonviolent actions that have been used repeatedly in this country, most notably during the Civil Rights era. As Gene Sharp defines it, "the term nonviolent action refers to those methods of protest, noncooperation, and intervention in which the actionists, without employing physical violence, refuse to do certain things which they are expected, or required, to do" (Sharp 2). Research identifies 197 types of nonviolent action, organized into three classes: "nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention" (Sharp 3).

Many of these types were made popular during the Civil Rights era, when sit-ins, marches, and public protests made headlines across the country as minority groups demanded greater civil liberties within the context of an emerging modern America. Most remarkable is the nonviolent protest, which is "symbolic in its effect and produces an awareness of the existence of dissent" (Sharp 3). Occupy Wall Street employs such elements to draw attention to the dissatisfaction of many Americans in the wake of the recession. Several marches and public protests took place throughout October 2011, with labor unions joining for a march across the bridge on October 5th, 2011. Occupy Times Square was another large-scale execution of the nonviolent public protest. The movement also embraces methods of noncooperation, as seen when protesters entered private bank property and closed their accounts in protest. A Citibank branch in New York was the site of one such protest, where demonstrators were actually locked inside and arrested by police. This represented a boycott of large banks to signal that the American people would no longer support unchecked corporate greed. Such practices reflect the movement's use of traditional nonviolent protest methods.

There are, however, many ways in which the Occupy Wall Street movement differs from traditional protests. Research notes that "protests are often symbolic statements with important elite or institutional support, not disruptive challenges to public order" (Oliver & Maney 468). Yet Occupy Wall Street is a direct challenge to public order and asks its supporters to disrupt the flow of elite-serving capitalism that has left the rest of the country in financial ruin and debt. The entire movement demands disruption — a feature not often attributed to modern protests, which tend to be more cooperative in nature.

How Occupy Differs from Traditional Protests

Additionally, the movement does not fight for a single solution to a fixed problem. There is no single person or act of legislation that it targets. Critics have described it as "good-willed but amorphous and aimless," while others "dismiss it as another eruption of hippie anarchism — complaining the kids, who stand for nothing, want to tear down everything" (Barber 1). In traditional nonviolent action, strategic objectives and strong singular leadership are considered essential to meeting goals. As Sharp argues, "strategy is just as important in nonviolent action as it is in military action" (Sharp 6). Rather than targeting a specific entity, Occupy Wall Street targets an entire philosophy that has allowed corporate greed to run rampant.

In this respect, the movement is markedly different from other modern protests. It lacks a clearly defined objective revolving around a single entity or mission. As one observer notes, "it models a new collectivism, picking up on the sustainable protest village of the movement's Egyptian counterparts, with food, first aid, and a library" (Rushkoff 1). It is not a one-day event after which protesters return to their normal lives. Rather, Occupy Wall Street has taken the concept of the sit-in to an extreme by establishing a semi-permanent base where protest has continued around the clock since its first days in September 2011.