OWS Movement Awakens Importance of Politics for the 99 Percent

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has come to a conclusion, having sprouted in New York on Sept. 17 to condemn the greed of financial capitalists. After being chased out of Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, the Occupy Movement’s variations in other cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia were also forcibly shut down on Nov. 30. Curtains thus closed on the systematic and collective protests after 73 days. Although the movement’s leadership claims it to be a minor retreat and that the embers of resistance are being kindled, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. Nonetheless, we cannot deny that the Occupy movement has gotten the United States and the rest of the world talking. They are talking of banding together and resisting, in order to correct the misfortune that the 99 percent suffer at the hands of the 1 percent.

The Occupy movement — which began in the capital of world finance — is at once extremely American and global. The 99 percent’s occupation of the 1 percent’s Wall Street symbolizes a full-scale war against the harmful effects of predatory capitalism. Economic growth in the past 30 years has only inflated the bonuses of the 1 percent, while the American middle class has steadily gone downhill. But the rage that stems from this is not a problem unique to the American 99 percent. The 99 percent of the world sympathized with the Occupy protests’ attack on market-centered neoliberalism. Last October, protests unfolded in approximately 1,500 cities across 82 countries. This was a historical event that exposed the Occupy movement’s worldwide solidarity to be the 99 percent’s fury at the collusion of the world’s top 1 percent.

The Occupy movement symbolizes a transition of the global zeitgeist from economics to politics. Indeed, it is because politics are controlled by the world’s richest 1 percent that rage against winner-takes-all capitalism has manifested itself in the Occupy movement. The ultimate purpose of the movement isn’t to physically occupy Wall Street, but to shift political influence from the 1 percent to the 99 percent and to restore democracy. Social welfare controversies are sparking up again in the U.S. and Europe, which can also be seen as an outcome of the Occupy movement. The New York Times assessed that, while protests have ended, their slogan “We are the 99 percent” continues to have impact. Ensuring that the 99 percent can lead stable and happy lives is not a matter of the economy but of politics. It is with this common truth that the Occupy movement awakens.