What started as a simple proposal from the Canadian activist group Adbusters has now spread across the United States and into Canada. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests began on September 17 with a few hundred people in New York’s Zucotti Park. Since then, more than 200 American cities have been occupied by thousands of activists, young people, hippies, union members, and the unemployed. Brooklyn Bridge was a scene of chaos as police resorted to brute force in an attempt to subdue the initially peaceful crowd of protesters.
In Canada, where the first calls for change were seen in the 2011 federal election with the surprising appointment of the NDP as the Official Opposition, the movement is expected to touch down on October 15th, though some protests have already unfolded, most notably ‘Occupy Bay Street’ in Toronto. Demonstrations are expected to be held all over Canada, in cities including Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal, and even Charlottetown. In Vancouver, more than 2,500 are expected to show up in an attempt to convey their message to the Canadian government.
But what really is the message? Despite the growing interest and overwhelming turnout for the movement, there is still a slight lack of organization and no obvious goal in the protests. Grievances brought up by the protesters range from climate change, to animal testing, to bank failure. Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty believe that things will be different here than in the U.S. Harper especially believes that, due to factors such as our performance in the global recession, most of the issues do not translate in Canada. Our banks held out, and jobs were even created. However, it is the view of several protesters that Canada might very well go the way of the U.S. Canadian protesters are expected to bring up topics related to the economic future, poor environmental policies, high tuition and militarization, caused by an increasingly money-oriented government. With such a broad number of issues, the protests can be considered as a symbolic way to demonstrate the unrest and irritation in the majority of the people. With a bit of luck, it will act as a wake-up call to the ruling parties for change. Because all of this traces back to the government, a common topic of interest is power, and its relations to economic justice.
Inspired by the successful pro-democratic protests in Cairo earlier this year, the main objective of the protests is to reclaim democracy so that the government works for the public, or the majority of the population. It’s an attempt to separate money from politics, an effort to obliterate the influence of large corporations on government legislations. Prominent in the movement is the ‘99 per cent’ concept. The idea is that while 99 per cent of the population is vulnerable to financial crisis, there is 1 per cent of the population that still gains profits in harder times. Though it’s especially true in the United States, the same can be said for Canada, especially during the economic crisis. In both countries, a very small group of people abuse a colossal amount of political and financial power at the expense of the middle and lower classes, who make up the majority of the citizens. Protesters believe that the income gap between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ is simply too high. To emphasize the point, it is said that the wealthiest 400 Americans are richer than the poorest 150 million combined. The vast majority of people (the 99 per cent), must work long hours for the basic necessities of living, and must suffer from a lack of financial means and unemployment. Many Canadians have enormous amounts of debt, because they are paying for everything but ending up with nothing. This goes to show that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.’ Thus, at its core, this is a war of the classes, where equality is everything and corporate greed is the main enemy.
Though tackling such a broad and complicated issue may seem like too big of a task, there is hope that such a large revolution will garner enough attention to initiate change, though the lack of concrete demands and organization may dampen the efforts slightly. As a symbolic way to voice our opinions, however, the ample media attention received by the events can even be considered a success on the part of the people.
But until we begin to see some change, the protests are expected to continue indefinitely … or at least until the Canadian winter hits and it gets too cold outside.
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