Today I occupied wall st
After visiting wall street, as passionate the energy was I got even more confused about the movement. There were libertarian’s screaming down with the Fed, students protesting loans, environmentalists championing sustainability, and one dude asserting the former secretary of finance was bald (zing!).
As a detail oriented, data driven person who can’t take arguments w/o justifications I’m doing some research. Some curated facts (will be adding to this):
- The share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.
- It’s not directed simply toward people who are wealthy. Rather, it is directed at the financial sector: a series of institutions whose ostensible purpose is to provide the liquidity that greases the wheels of the American economic engine. But instead of fulfilling their mission to help their customers make money, the financial sector has decided to engage in corrupt, fraudulent and abusive practices to extract an ever-increasing profit from the credit they provide, and use those ill-gotten gains to garner legislation and tax rates that favor their agenda and methodology.
What amazed me most were the working groups and organizing models the people had created. A schedule of today’s events including a general assembly, internet working groups, arts and culture sessions, lectures on the constitution. They even drafted a formal set of rules using the spokes working group system modeled after the spanish revolution. One thing’s for certain, what’s happening at wall st is pure collaborative anarchism - the thing I dreamed of experiencing when reading about the french temporary gov of the 1800’s. I owe it to myself to learn more.
