All over the world, this year has seen some of the most speedy and dramatic uprisings that have been seen for some time. Both in developed and developing countries people, predominantly the youth have been standing up for themselves to say that no, let us have our future, you cannot take that away from us.
Since 2008 the global economy has fluctuated up and down, but for the most part, for the 99% down. For some people this has just meant that they can’t take their annual holidays to Europe or the Bahamas, for others it has meant that their entire lives have been swept out of their own control and onto the streets. This cannot simply be blamed on an inability to help oneself or a lack of education because that is simply not true. In the United States large areas are now abandoned as people have lost their homes to mortgagee sales, as large corporations have moved their labour off shore where it can be done more cheaply. Detroit, once the home of the American car, of American big business is now largely abandoned. In January of this year, The Telegraph reported that university graduate unemployment in Britain was up to 20%, with around 45 students applying for each available job.
In New Zealand we think that we live in this clean green equitable nation that has set social precedents for the world, with our early suffragette movement to name one thing. But that happened in 1893. We are quickly becoming one of the most inequitable countries in the world.
But who cares right? My family’s okay. It’s okay, when I leave university with my shiny new degree I’ll get a job at a fantastic company! WOOHOO SUITS AND YACHTS.
And for some people that will be true, but for alot, for the majority it’s not. And it’s not okay. I personally don’t give a shit about being rich, I’d just like to be comfortable and so should everyone else. Furthermore, I am happy to work hard and I’m completely okay with paying taxes. I’m completely okay with people doing well.
But there’s this huge gap between doing well and earning so much money that you can fly your kid across Waiheke in a helicopter so that they can go to a playdate.
That’s what the Occupy movement is about. There needs to be a huge change in the way that people think about things, as Dr Campbell Jones said in The Dominion Post today, ‘The movement is fighting the idea that unregulated capitalism somehow benefits everyone, and argues instead that it is a system involving systematic inequality that principally serves the interests of a small elite.’
And another point, this is not a movement about hippies who have learnt to use the internet. At the Auckland Occupy protest there were men in suits, lecturers, families, people of all denominations and all walks of life coming together under a single cause. Groups of pilots, of soldiers have been reported to be walking down Wall St. I’ll say it again. This is not about hippies, but about our entire society.
So my final note,
To those of you who snort, or get angry at what the use is in protesting, who think that it is a battle between left and right or against people having good jobs or working in industry/ business/ whatever. Get your facts right and actually do some reading of your own. Read with an open mind, one that’s open to both the flaws and positives of what is happening. Read anything, everything, watch fox news and then something completely different! The most informed person on the movement may still disagree with what is happening and that’s okay, it’s better even.
Just don’t look down on me, for doing some reading.
