Occupy Wall Street (O.W.S.) was a left-wing populist and progressive movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics. It began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial District, and lasted for fifty-nine days—from September 17 to November 15, 2011.
The motivations for Occupy Wall Street largely resulted from public distrust in the private sector during the aftermath of the Great Recession in the United States. There were many particular points of interest leading up to the Occupy movement that angered populist and left-wing groups. For instance, the 2008 bank bailouts under the George W. Bush administration utilized congressionally appropriated taxpayer funds to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which purchased toxic assets from failing banks and financial institutions. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on independent political expenditures without government regulation. Many viewed the ruling as a way for moneyed interests to corrupt public institutions and legislative bodies, such as the United States Congress.
The protests gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other countries. The Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters initiated the call for a protest. The main issues raised by Occupy Wall Street were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS slogan, "We are the 99%", refers to income and wealth inequality in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. To achieve their goals, protesters acted on consensus-based decisions made in general assemblies which emphasized redress through direct action over the petitioning to authorities.
The protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. Protesters then turned their focus to occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, foreclosed homes, college and university campuses, and social media.
Origins
The original protest was called for by Kalle Lasn, Micah White and others of Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, who conceived of a September 17 occupation in Lower Manhattan. The call for action reflected growing anger in the public after the 2008 financial crisis. The first such proposal appeared on the Adbusters website on February 2, 2011, under the title "A Million Man March on Wall Street". This early framing showed that the protest was intended not only as a single demonstration, but also as a broader challenge to the relationship between finance and political authority in the U.S. The planning of the protest used tactics seen at other protest movements, including things such as public assembly, symbolic occupation, and decentralized organizing. Lasn registered the OccupyWallStreet.org web address on June 9, which redirected to a #OccupyWallStreet page on the Adbusters website. On July 13, 2011, in a blog post titled "A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics", Adbusters proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy, the perceived lack of legal consequences for those who brought about the global crisis of monetary insolvency, and an increasing disparity in wealth, envisioned as "a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain" two events that had taken place earlier that year. These themes later became pivotal to Occupy Wall Street's message, especially the criticism of the concentration of wealth and influence inside of the "1 percent." By framing the grievances of people in broad and extensive terms, the organizers helped create a message that resonated with a large audience. The protest was promoted with an image featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull statue. That image helped what ended up defining the movement's visual identity and then gave the protest a memorable symbolic appeal to the public and to the people online. In July, Justine Tunney registered OccupyWallSt.org, which became the main online hub for the movement. The site played an important role in spreading information and coordinating people involved, turning the original call to action into a sustained protest movement.
The U.S. Day of Rage, a group that organized to protest "corporate influence [that] corrupts our political parties, our elections, and the institutions of government", also joined the movement. Its involvement helped bring together Occupy Wall Street to an already up and running network of activists who are focused on the influence of money and all the corporations that embedded in American politics. This support grounded and solidified the protest's early base and increased its visibility to others before it gained national attention from people all around the country. The protest itself began on September 17; from its first day, it attracted all sorts of people, drawn by a feeling of dissatisfaction and disgust for the perceived economic inequality at the time and the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. A Facebook page for the demonstrations began two days later on September 19 featuring a YouTube video of earlier events.Social media quickly became a major tool for the movement to gain more attention. It allowed organizers and supporters to share near-real time updates on what was happening through images, videos, and calls to action. This digital presence helped this movement reach many different audiences who did not necessarily watch TV and were far beyond the lower Manhattan area. This also encouraged similar demonstrations in other cities. By mid-October, Facebook listed 125 Occupy-related pages. The rapid spread of these pages reflected the speed at which Occupy Wall Street developed from just a small local protest to a major nationwide and even international movement. Online platforms helped the movement shape their identity by using different slogans, visuals, and accounts to see different police responses to these protests. This in turn heavily increased public awareness and participation.
The original location for the protest was One Chase Manhattan Plaza, with Bowling Green Park (the site of the "Charging Bull") and Zuccotti Park as alternate choices. Police discovered this before the protest began and fenced off two locations; but they left Zuccotti Park, the group's third choice, open. Since the park was private property, police could not legally force protesters to leave without being requested to do so by the property owner. At a press conference held the same day the protests began, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg explained, "people have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it."
Antecedent and subsequent OWS prototypes include the British student protests of 2010, 2009-2010 Iranian election protests, the Arab Spring protests, and, more closely related, protests in Chile, Greece, Spain and India. Occupy Wall Street, in turn, gave rise to the Occupy movement in the United States.
Many commentators have stated that the Occupy Wall Street movement has roots in the philosophy of anarchism.
Background
"We are the 99%"
The Occupy protesters' slogan "We are the 99%" referred to the income disparity in the US and economic inequality in general, which were main issues for OWS. The phrase gave the movement a very simple and very memorable way to show people and express a complex and critique of wealth concentration and a massively unequal political influence. By comparing most of the people in the United States with a small amount of economic elites, the slogan turned ideas about inequity into a different language that was widely understandable and politically powerful. It derived from a "We the 99%" flyer calling for OWS's second General Assembly in August 2011. The variation "We are the 99%" originated from a Tumblr page of the same name. That Tumblr page helped create a more personalized slogan by allowing individuals to share financial difficulties they were going through such as debt, unemployment, financial hardship, and housing insecurity. As a result, this phrase became more than just a statistical claim, serving instead as more of a collective statement of identity for people who felt excluded from economic and political power.Huffington Post reporter Paul Taylor said the slogan was "arguably the most successful slogan since 'Hell no, we won't go!'" of the Vietnam War era, and that the vast majority of Americans saw the income gap as causing social friction. Its success also reflected bigger and broader strategies of communication of Occupy Wall Street, which relied on short, repeatable language that could spread easily through signs, speeches, and different social media. The slogan was boosted by statistics which were confirmed by a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released in October 2011. Writing in 2022, historian Gary Gerstle says that the slogan "proved surprisingly appealing" in a nation that, during its neoliberal high point, often denounced ideas of class warfare. Because of this appeal, "We are the 99%" became a defining phrases in the movement Occupy Wall Street. This helped shape many things, such as public discussion of inequality, which went well beyond the protests themselves.
Income and wealth inequality
Income inequality and wealth inequality were focal points of the Occupy Wall Street protests. These concerns reflected a much broader and more public debate about whether the benefits of economic growth were truly being shared across society. For a many participants, the issue was not only the economic distance between the rich and the poor, but also the belief that economic inequality was translating to more unequal political power, thus reducing opportunity for regular ordinary citizens. This idea was studied by Arindajit Dube and Ethan Kaplan of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who noted that "... Only after it became increasingly clear that the political process was unable to enact serious reforms to address the causes or consequences of the economic crisis did we see the emergence of the OWS movement." As a result, inequality became both an economic and democratic issue within the movement's rhetoric. Fear of dollar decline broadened interest in monetary reform.
Goals
OWS's goals included a reduction in the influence of corporations on politics, more balanced distribution of income, more and better jobs, bank reform (especially to curtail speculative trading by banks), forgiveness of student loan debt or other relief for indebted students, and alleviation of the foreclosure situation. Taken together, these goals can be reflected as the movement's bigger criticism of an economic system than many of people believed favored the financial institutions and wealthy elites over ordinary citizens. Rather than just focusing only on a single policy issue, Occupy Wall Street brought a very wide range of things together such as inequality, debt, unemployment, and political influence. Some media labeled the protests "anti-capitalist", while others disputed the relevance of this label.
Some protesters favored a fairly concrete set of national policy proposals. One OWS group that favored specific demands created a document entitled the 99 Percent Declaration, but this was regarded as an attempt to "co-opt" the "Occupy" name, and the document and group were rejected by the General Assemblies of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia. this disagreement illustrated a larger tension between the people inside the movement, such as people who wanted specific legislative demands and other people who believed that it is strength coming from remaining open, decentralized, and very broadly representative.
During the occupation in Liberty Square, a declaration was issued with a list of grievances. The declaration stated that the "grievances are not all-inclusive".
Main organization
The assembly was the main OWS decision-making body and used a modified consensus process, where participants attempted to reach consensus and then dropped to a 9/10 vote if consensus was not reached. This process reflected the movement's commitments to horizontal, participatory democracy, in contrast to traditional top-down leadership. Some of the supporters viewed the General Assembly not only as a practical way to make decisions, but also as a way to model the more inclusive politics that the movement had been advocating for.