Forum Post: Interviews with Occupiers
Posted 11 years ago on May 14, 2012, 5:27 p.m. EST by pogobat
(0)
from Brooklyn, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I've followed Occupy from a distance since the beginning, but wanted to know more than what I was getting from the mainstream media. In the spirit of citizen journalism I went down to Union Square last Friday and did some interviews.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngFmmKB6Jvs
I learned a lot, but left with new questions. My question for you is, do you think these three are a good representation of the movement? What would you add/retract? Genuinely curious here.
Why wouldn't they be a good representation of the movement? They were there and so were you. Now you're here.....with us.
As far as I'm concerned, OWS is a systemic anomaly of sorts; movements of this sort generally crop up as a means of expressing popular anger with a given political or economic situation that is generally perceived to be unjust and/or corrupt. I've learned from watching this group that I can't really expect them to take on the responsibility required to design and implement policy initiatives to lead us away from our current crisis and I've basically made my peace with that (even though that hasn't really been easy for me).
In once sense, though, I am heartened by the birth and development of Occupy Wall Street, not because I hope for much action from it, but because of what its existence means. The presence of OWS means that for better or for worse a non-negligible segment of the population has realized that something is wrong with the track this country has been going down for the past thirty or so years, and the ramifications of this have hit them hard enough that they're willing to get out in the streets and risk arrest and abuse in exchange for the possibility of changing things.
While that alone does not a more productive domestic or more reasonable foreign policy make, it was enough to get people talking about these things in a vocabulary that I haven't heard in quite some time. Their actions made it okay to discuss income inequality and the failures of trickle-down supply-side economics in the national arena without being isolated and shouted down, and for that I am grateful.
Honestly, though, I have to say that unless May Day truly turns out to be a rebirth instead of a last hurrah (and at this point I honestly can't tell which is the case because it's been all of two weeks) then OWS will have rendered all the services it can to the national political dialogue and it probably won't have much positive impact from here on out. That said, I'm hoping to see the discussion they started move further both onto the streets and into the halls of power, and I'm hoping to see a return to efficiency and good governance in DC and a return of political and financial power from large corporations and financial institutions back to the American people.
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