In Defense of Occupy Wall Street

Decisions are being made in America tonight. Some people are choosing to be assertive about their rights, whether they are giving words of support, marching with protesters, or using their right to free speech to debate the legitimacy of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Others are choosing to be assertive about their opinions of the protests by impeding conversations or making statements backed by inflated emotions (for or against).Yet most Americans still reside on the sidelines, either from uncertainty about the reason for the protests, questions about the legitimacy of protester's arguments, or disinterest/ lack of knowledge about the entire issue. Wherever you stand, it is important for all Americans to recognize a few things about the reasons for a movement and its importance in America's future.

To begin with, there are legitimate, even crucial reasons for the Occupy Wall Street movement. For one, there are individual reasons people have chosen to participate in the protests: they or family member(s) have lost a job, homes, or have had to make other serious sacrifices. Some are “fed up” with certain laws or policies in our financial and political sectors. Still others have lost a great deal of hope for their future. So when questioned about their decision, naturally the reasons participants give tend to differ.

But there are also deeper, more urgent reasons for the Occupy Wall Street movement. They stem from the recognition that there is something wrong about how the financial system and America's government is working – something roughly 70% of Americans can agree with. This uncomfortable sense is backed by the statistical reality in many areas – our falling real wages, the growing debt to GDP ratio, or our growing income gap. Some may argue this is the result of a temporary economic spasm, but considering that most of these trends span decades, this is either one long economic spasm or there are real, deep underlying issues. Underlying issues that about half a dozen Presidents and four decades have yet to solve, probably because Americans have been going about it the wrong way. A shout there, a push for patchwork regulation here, and a few votes maybe once every four years. This, versus hundreds of dollars the average American spends per week that usually goes to some corporation, the reliance on one or a few news corporations for education on the state of affairs, and the lack of dedication to making long-term investments of time or energy in society. This latter bunch of choices may work to our short-term benefit, but for whom and how long? Which has had more influence on political and corporate decision-making? What seems easy is not making life easier, and the fate of Rome and Greece can testify to the consequences of a public that repudiates responsibility.

Given the long-standing nature of these problems against several different administrations, those problems may really be beyond the capability of even one of the most influential individuals in the world. In which case, the conglomerate of Americans is not only one of the last bodies capable of bringing real change (regardless of those challenges), but has the responsibility to. Hence the need for a body of Americans to deal with these problems.

So what if this is true, why now? Rebuttal: why wait? At the founding of our country, a man was once publicly condoned for saying, “Give me peace in my time” in front of his child. For one, that callousness is not a part of society easily submitted to. For two, that is an unlikely reality. An appearance of peace may remain, the kind that only comes by enforcing stability for the comfort of a decreasing few and underlying insecurity. The third and most important reason is the fact that the future is not going to be patient in delivering. In a culture oriented towards the 'now', it may be hard to comprehend how time works, but history has shown that underlying social problems left unattended typically give way to greater social instability faster than society can deal with it. And though America does not have nearly the problems other countries have had and do have, do we really want to even risk going there?

But why Wall Street? How would you deal with these problems? Obviously the questions could continue endlessly. In short, our economic system touches nearly every aspect of our lives, directly or indirectly. Because of its overwhelming influence on American lives, it will be hard to bring about real change before dealing with the problems that originate in the economic system. As for how, that depends on who gets involved and how strongly they stand together. Either Occupy Wall Street will become an unfortunate last chance on America's road to repeating history or bring fulfillment to our founding father's ideology of “a government (and society) for the people, by the people.”