How Did the Arab Spring Come to New York?

There are similarities between the American protest movement and the Arab protest movements, except that the first does not call for a change of regime and has the support of the American president himself.

I write this article from New York, where I had the opportunity to see what many consider to be an extension of the Arab Spring — protests that began in the financial center of New York, the heart of the American and possibly global financial world, that have now spread to over 60 American cities.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began on Sept. 17, when about 500 young people gathered in a small garden named Zuccotti Park, located about 100 meters north of Wall Street, in the south of the island of Manhattan, to protest their living conditions and the role of financial institutions in creating those conditions. The protest that day easily extended outside the park. In the following days, with the passage of a storm and heavy rains in New York, the number of protesters decreased to about 100, but they began to increase significantly later with the improvement of the weather and the spreading media coverage. The number of supporters of the protest increased to tens of thousands during the long holiday weekend. The movement that began with the youth, students and the unemployed has since received the support of the largest workers union, the AFL-CIO, and other prestigious labor groups in the history of social movements. The protests have spread to more than 60 American cities.

The movement has drawn attention from the beginning for its similarities to the Arab demonstrations, in terms of its components, methods and motivations. Perhaps the choice of the park itself was inspired by the Arab protest movements, for this park was known as Liberty Park until 2006; this is similar to Tahrir Square in Cairo and Liberation Square in Sana’a.

Like what happened in the Arab protests, within a few days, the park, with an area of only about 2,000 square meter, became a place of gathering for the young protesters, armed with mobile heaters, sleeping bags and other facilities including a medical clinic, a unit responsible for security and legal and media advisers in charge of communicating with the police and the media.

The demonstrators move in the neighborhood surrounding Wall Street in conjunction with the law and under the control of the New York police, who are practiced in dealing with protest movements. They know, to a large extent, the legal limits of demonstrations and they have continual contact with the “lawyer” of the protest movement. But when the protesters go beyond the legal limit, the police stop them or arrest them for a few minutes or more, and then the protest resumes once again.

The biggest occurrence of police intervention was the incident of the closing of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, Oct. 1. The bridge is a famous and vital artery linking the island of Manhattan with neighboring Brooklyn, and it is busy with traffic throughout night and day. To close it without official permission means causing a real traffic crisis in addition to violating the law. Therefore, when protesters paralyzed traffic going from Manhattan to Brooklyn that day, the police urged protesters to get out of the path of cars and to move to the upper pedestrian path. Some of them refused to obey, and after several hours of the road being closed, the police evacuated the demonstrators from the road by force and arrested several hundred of them. The number of arrests of demonstrators made that day reached about 700, according to the police, but many of them were released shortly after.

With the increasing media coverage of the movement, similar movements have begun in other major cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Philadelphia. The protests arrived at Washington, D.C., this week.

The movement succeeded in focusing media attention on the concerns of the average citizen and his/her anger at the continuing economic crises, which has now exceeded three years, and the increased income gap between the rich and the poor.

The focus of the Wall Street protesters is to draw attention to the negative role, in their opinion, of financial institutions in the economic crisis. They point out that the U.S. government provided the financial sector with hundreds of billions of dollars during the crisis, saving it from bankruptcy, but the return for citizens has been limited. Instead of providing new jobs, institutions in this sector have fired thousands of workers. They also point to the role of banks in the bankruptcy of many individuals and in driving them out of their homes mortgaged to banks. This crisis still continues today.

Even with the similarities that I have pointed out between the U.S. and Arab protest movements, there are still significant differences between them. The Arab protest movements began as a call for reform but quickly became a call for the departure of the system, or at least the head of the regime. The American protest movement is against specific policies and institutions in the system and does not call for regime change. Certainly, there are some among the protesters calling for some form of regime change, such as the anarchist group, but they are of a negligible number.

If there is a desire for a change in leadership, it will happen through the next election in 2012. The timing of this movement is intended mostly for this purpose. It is true that the protests are a reaction to the continuing economic crisis and echoes, as is repeatedly said, the protest movement that began in the Arab world, but the timing also coincides with the beginning of the American election campaign. In 2012, the United States will hold elections for the president, the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, some state governors as well as local officials. Therefore, it is in the interest of each group to seek to influence the outcome of those elections.

Perhaps the difference is more clear when we know that President Barack Obama has come out in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He supports them in blaming the financial sector and big business, instead of his government, for the deteriorating economic conditions. The opposition party, the Republican Party, has stood against the movement so far because it wants to continue its criticism of the government and not of the financial sector, which is one of the most important supporters of the party.

This is the most evident difference between the Arab protest movements, which demands the departure of the system and its leaders, and the U.S. protest movement, which enjoys the support of the President of the United States himself.