The OWS, which started as an innocuous gathering in Zuccotti Park in New York City, rapidly caught the public imagination, as it spread across the country swiftly and effectively. Author Amy Dean’s journal article ‘Occupy Wall Street: A Protest against a Broken Economic Compact’ (first published in Harvard International Review, 2012) offers insight and rationale behind his great mass movement. It goes to the root of the grievances by OWS participants and consolidates their claims through supporting statistics and poll findings. Not only is the article systematic and scientific, but was published in the distinguished Harvard International Review, making it credible and useful for research. The author addresses the crux of the problem, namely that of the ‘broken economic compact’. She notes how “the Occupy movement is a protest against a broken economic compact that reaches into the very middle of America and that is resonating in other parts of the world as well”. (Dean 12) Rather than being an arm-chair investigation of the landmark event, the author gives first-hand accounts of the unfolding movement from its epi-centre in New York City. As she observes in the introduction, during the early months when OWS maintained tent cities in lower Manhattan and other metropolitan areas around the country, these abodes attracted people with counter-cultural and radical political beliefs. Watching these developments on the Television, one got the impression that the assembled group is from fringes of society and not from the American mainstream. But this innocuous looking motley crew soon swelled up in numbers and in no time made their voices being heard. (Dean 12)
Occupy Wall Street thus a crucial reality check for a nation that is on the brink of economic and social disintegration. The movement showed up a mirror to the nation’s leaders and reminded them of their misplaced priorities and unethical behavior. But the initial impact of the movement will fade quickly if protestors fail to escalate and maintain exposure to the issues. Regardless of what strategies they adopt moving forward, “they have already left behind a transformed framework for public debate in America. Occupy Wall Street has struck a chord with a wide swath of the country by highlighting issues that had been all but hidden in mainstream news coverage prior to the street protests.” (Dean 13)
To analyze the central slogan of the campaign, the figure 99 percent is only approximate. In fact, a vast concentration of the nation’s wealth is held by the top quintile of 1% of the American population. This makes the protest by the 99.90% against the remaining 0.10% of the population. This speaks for the moral righteousness of the outrage. By practically bringing an overwhelming majority of the population under one genuine cause, the movement acquired legitimacy. To illustrate the point, let us consider some statistics pertaining to income distribution in the United States:
“By definition, practically all of us are in the “99 percent” of Americans with annual incomes below $506,553. Of that 99% of Americans, about 6%–or one out of fifteen–live in extreme poverty, defined within the United States as having income of less than half of the official poverty line. The number of Americans with incomes at or below the national poverty line is even greater, at fifty-one million. The Census Bureau reports that about one-third of the American population has incomes below 150% of the poverty line. These working households typically “live paycheck to paycheck,” with little to spare for extras beyond basic household necessities. The remaining two-thirds of Americans, labeled “other” in the reports, are above the 33% identified as poor but below the 1% defined by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement as excessively wealthy.” (Davis 931)