Occupy?

I've posted a couple of links on Facebook in the last few days, but I think this warrants a bit more.

A few months back, I was invited to an event on facebook which read simply #OccupyWallStreet.  It peaked my attention, so I did a little more searching and found out there were some fundamentally disgruntled people who planned a peaceful take over of Wall Street in New York City.

It lay a little dormant in my mind for the months proceeding, but never quite out of my mind.  Then, about  2 weeks ago, the event began, as about 1000 people began a peaceful march on NYC's financial district.

They call themselves the 99 percent, they're a leaderless resistance against corporate greed in America.  In the last two weeks their numbers have swelled, much to the distaste of the officers of NYPD - check out one or two of these videos to see what I mean.



Yup, that's a knee on the throat.



Yup, he just maced peaceful protestors.



I wont even comment on this one.

Anyway, the protest has moved beyond 2 weeks now, and finally it's starting to hit the mainstream press - but for most of the last two weeks you would've struggled to hear anything about it other than through the Occupy Wall Street website, youtube, or their livestream from the square.

The police are using all kinds of interesting tactics - some of them legal.  But the movement is spreading - a couple of days ago 'Occupy Together' popped up and within days there were cities all over the US and Canada registering their towns and cities, setting up facebook pages to self organise, and setting dates to march on banks / financial districts / corporate headquarters.

Today I took another look, and found events have now started popping up in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Finland, UK, Sweden, Mexico, & Japan.  Many are calling this America's 'Arab Spring'.

I don't know whether this is the movement that will bring significant change to America, or whether this is a flash of 'peaceful anger' (unlike the more regular anger of the UK riots).

The Guardian picked up the story of the Brooklyn Bridge protest today where tens of people were arrested for occupying one of NYC's main bridges.  And the day before a march on the police headquarters went down after the pepper-spraying police officer was named by the activists. I wonder whether he'll receive any legal action for his seemingly unlawful use of pepper spray? Hmm...

One thing is for sure - this seems to be more than just a few radicals. This seems to me, to be a mass movement of discontent - thankfully peaceful at this stage.  I would expect the White House to be acknowledging this group soon, and I would expect the banks and giant corporates of America to be shifting somewhat nervously in their seats as their disproportionate amount of power is challenged by the 99% of America which claim to suffer at their hands.

Finally - one last video to have a watch of.  This one is from #OccupyWallStreet itself;


Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution from ivarad on Vimeo.


Go on, I urge you to research a little more for yourselves - find out why these people are out there in the cold, calling for change.

**Update: one of my favoured bloggers & authors of the moment Umair Haque, just posted this blog about The Metamovement. Well worth a read**