Latest Stories: Occupy Wall Street Movement: Occupy Wall Street Movement
The Occupy Wall Street protest started on September 17th. The protesters call themselves "the 99%" and are demanding major reforms of the global financial system by curbing the power of banks and corporations. They claim they stand in opposition to the 1% of Americans who control the majority of the country's wealth and system, and they insist they will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.
At the beginning, media, especially the main stream ones, just showed low regard for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I also thought they were more likely to indulge in a political picnic type of activities. They had no unified concrete agenda to change the society; there were not so many people from working class; and neither many blacks, Hispanics many other minorities. And those are still in the same.
The protest, however, spreads across U. S., including Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, and Oakland, and even in the world. It becomes a real movement. It has a big rational.
When I moved to the United States from Japan in the late 1980s, I thought this country contained an outstanding element of the third world counties. It is the enormous inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor. A more surprised thing was most Americans seemed to accept it or to ignore such a harsh reality.
It is much worse, now. For the last 30 years, the gap has been just rapidly growing. The richest 1% of the population in the U.S. are said they own nearly 40% of all U.S.’s assets, or even 50% of those. And, due to the Occupy Street Protest movement, for the first time, a very large number of Americans have started to seriously recognize the reality, and started to show the frustration of it. The Occupy Wall Street movement might grow further more, with a variety organizations, or groups, joining together.